“Why don’t you just go and talk to them” Ilia nudges S’tance who’s standing to the side of a small arena which is suspended away from the city connected by a rope bridge.

He looks to her and back to the gathered beast students “But I can’t just—”

She plants a boot squarely on his ass and pushes him into the back of one of the students “Just go!”

“Ilia” Roxie comes up behind her and pokes her back with her stinger, causing her to jump and yelp. She turns around a growls at Roxie who just snorts into her hand “You really need to interact with some other humans. And stop pushing S’tance around”

“You know he hates me, right? I’m just trying to get ri—ack!” She interrupted by a chop to the forehead.

Roxie harrumphs whilst crossing her arms “No reason to not try and get along” Roxie sighs and raises her head to look at S’tance, who’s now got the rapt attention of every student and is going through various stances, then back to Ilia “Anyway, time to earn your keep. I’ve got a mission, and I’m dragging you with”

“What?—” Ilia turns her head around to pulls something “Why?”

Roxie snorts as she starts rubbing the spot “Cuz Mother Salt gave you a clean bill of health and I’ve convinced the wisdoms that they have enough samples for research. Plus, I’m finally fucking done politicking with the adventurer society—” Her posture sags “Turns out, they’ve been actually pretty starved of adventure. And I don’t feel comfortable working alone just yet”

With that, Roxie starts them walking back through the city; Besholm is a city set inside a split mountain, the roads and buildings suspended between the two halves, even breaching into the shaded crack in the earth below. The top layer consists of large rounded houses which are painted in a myriad of natural colours, whilst the bottom has a sparce smattering of domes nestled in a blinding sheet of webs. The two mountain halves are pocked with doorways, windows and balconies that interconnect with the two layers, with the main path between the layers being a massive ramp that doubles back on itself only a handful of times.

Ilia rubs her neck whilst looking away “How is he?”

“Who? S’tance or?” Roxie leaves the question hanging, which Ilia answers with a nod downwards “He’s recovering nicely, in a week or two he’ll be back to work”

Ilia mutters “But the permanent damage?”

Roxie shrugs “He’ll always have some discomfort whenever he uses his powers, but considering he’s a regenerate? He doesn’t need to use them often”

“That’s good” She quietly admits “How come I’ve been cleaned already whilst he’s still under care”

“That’s the result of intention. You accepted Necrotic energy that’s been hammered into submission to convert your soul, whilst the energy was hammered into his soul for the intention of damaging his. It’s the difference between pouring a cup of hot tar over you and drinking it” The continue in silence for a bit before Roxie spots Meandus “Hey shit beak!”

He flinches before slowly turning to face her “Oh, it’s you”

“What’s up?” He only responds by looking away “You had the talk again, didn’t you”

He remains silent even as Roxie nears.

“Fuck sake Mean. Why do you come to me every time” She stops and puts her hand on her hips whilst looking down on him.

He snaps around and shouts “I am not!”

Roxie responds by shoving a finger at him “Don’t bullshit me, every time that Renlin talks to you about being his groomed again you find me afterwards”

He returns to being silent.

“C’mon, I know the third front has been taken from you, but you need to take this an opportunity to actually become strong” She shakes her head and leans towards him “Or, for the fucking sake of the fates, go back to being a wisdom. They’ll let you continue leading battles, you’re clearly good at it. You filled in Tankless’s shoes without issue”

He sneers at her in response “If that’s the case, then why do people keep questioning if—”

“Because you are by far the weakest groomed of strength in the entirety of our history” She grabs him by the top of his skull and shakes him “Fucking, I’m giving you two choices—” She produces a house key “ Go to Maria, deliver a letter to the adventurer society and stay at my place until some of my friends pick you up. Or I force you take up the mantle of wisdom”

He leans back and glares at Roxie who stares back. After a moment he begins to wilt under her glare and takes the key.

“Good, gimme an hour or two to sort some stuff out and we can leave together” With that, they walk around him and continue to the elder’s rest, marked by a massive pair of wooden doors with its own clearing within the city.

“Hey, how old is he?” Ilia twists her neck around to the slightly stunned Harpy.

Roxie rolls her eyes up and frowns “Fates, I think only a year or two older than me, so mid-twenties I guess”

“And he’s leading battles?” She looks up to Roxie with raised brows “If what you said is anything to go by”

“Yeah? You need to remember that every groomed is a prodigy and a fucking hard worker” Roxie gestures with a hand for emphasis.

Ilia chuckles and asks, “What would you be a prodigy at?”

“Violence. Always had a talent” Roxie puffs up as she states this.

Ilia eyes her as if she’s going to go back on what she just said, but when Roxie only gives a toothy smile in return she returns to looking forwards.

“And don’t worry about the question of trust issues and shit. You can’t kill me”

Ilia frowns at her but says nothing as they enter through a smaller door set into the larger ones of the rest. The inside is a long hallway that goes deep into this half of the mountain, the walls lined with elaborately decorated doors and large statues of the elders of before.

Roxie first heads all the way to the other end of the rest to a door with only a few curving bands of a lighter wood as decoration. Inside they’re hit with the smothering heat and smell of a humid greenhouse, the outer ring is made of dense but organised plant life with a large pond in its centre with several steppingstones of different hight. As Ilia wonders away a bit towards the more brightly coloured flowers, Roxie begins stepping across the stones. As she reaches halfway, she snaps around and snatches a wooden block out of the air that was launched at her which is quickly thrown back, knocking the offending angel on his ass.

The old human angel ruffles his feathers as he laboriously stands, eventually coming to lean on his cane and glare at Roxie as he rubs the spot on his forehead that was targeted “Unruly as always. You never did treat your elders with respect”

“Yeah, but most of them didn’t knock me into a deep pond with wooden blocks and call it training” Roxie hops a few stones closer to his edge.

He watches as she jumps and asks, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for that little surprise you’ve made for me, cuz I’m leaving today so you might as well give it now” She leans forwards until she’s eye to eye with him in his stoop.

He glares at Roxie with an intensity that’s palpable to even the most oblivious, even getting Ilia’s attention which leaves her shying away a little. Roxie meanwhile just smirks back until he relents “You never did have much respect for ceremony” He disappears behind a section of bushes before returning with a large tome, nearly as big as Roxie’s torso “You would have made an excellent elder of strength”

“I might still if Mean doesn’t shed his downing and grow some fucking feathers” She mutters this as she takes the tome and runs a hand across the cover, the brown leather layered over itself in large triangles without any lettering or other decoration marking it as something other than an ordinary book.

The angel hasn’t stopped his grumping pout, even as her examination of the tome leaves her smiling “The pages are larger than normal, folded into themselves so you don’t have to spend time worry about spreading any spells you make across multiple. The covers also have an enchantment that’ll run air through the pages to help prevent the parchment melting”

Ilia speaks as she steps around the pond “Wait, I thought angels can’t do enchantments?”

He starts rubbing his stubble “It’s a dumb enchantment, reliant on the wielder’s mana to read what I’ve put into it”

Ilia frowns and slowly asks “Then It’s not an enchantment”

“It’s an enchantment because it is wholly un-reliant on the mana having any kind prior knowledge” He waits for Ilia to retort but continues explaining as she doesn’t “And as you can see—” He takes his cane and flips the page to the back which is instead a thin box “The back is for storing any writing implements and inks you’ll use. Including some vellum for drafting”

Roxie pulls out one of the green tinted pages which extends to half a meter “This is much better than what I expected from you”

He dismissively waves as a chair floats behind him which he sits on “Bah, when have I ever said that I hate you”

“True, but when have to told me that you tolerate me?” Roxie looks up to him with a cocked brow.

He shakes his head before jutting in the direction of the door “Get” As they leave and close the door, Roxie catches him sadly muttering “I wish you had never come here”

She pauses at the door, letting Ilia wonder off a little before she notices her missing. Quickly remembering herself, Roxie jogs up and start leading them back out the rest, not even trying to hide her dampened mood.

She barges into another room without warning, a long library of scrolls that starts with a table, then snatches a particular one off the table that was set aside. Ignoring the worried looks of the angels and Yerrais, a tall four-winged harpy with an extra pair of arms, that were at the table. She then continues through the rest before coming to an unwilling stop. She bares her teeth at Ilia whose shadow is invading her own.

She retracts her shadow but still stands with her arms crossed “Why don’t you talk about what’s up with you before you hurt someone”

“I’m just frustrated and being reminded of that puts me in a shitty mood” She sighs and continues walking “I’m not going to hurt anyone; I just want out of here”

Ilia keeps her frown as she follows “Frustrated about what?”

“Just, stuff” Roxie pauses and rubs her face before striding out of the rest proper without a hint of turmoil.

They descend through the city to their lodgings, Roxie amongst the upper layer whilst Ilia goes all the way down into the crack. Eventually, they meet up at the base of the other half of the mountain.

Roxie waits by a large reinforced door in the mountainside whilst Ilia trudges up to her “Here” She hands over a folded-up chainmail shirt and an extremely short spear.

Ilia takes the items and looks them over “Why?”

“What do you mean why? Your regeneration is gone so you need to protect yourself” She then nods to the spear “It’s collapsible, by the way”

She presses in a section under the head of the spear and the rest of the body springs out.

Roxie nods for her to follow through the door, passing a heavily manned checkpoint onto a Dias where the world shifts to the Dias in Spidra. Roxie quickly speeds past the niceties and greetings of the villagers, gaining a bag of cookies in the process before leaving.

Following a guidebook, the pair arrive at the portal to Gandwald within a day. They're stopped at the entrance as a massive caravan rolls out, laden with boxes and bags. Roxie and Ilia cringe as the miasma of spices and scents hits them both, only dissipating long after they pass. Once they’re allowed to enter, it’s a short walk across the bridge into the realm proper. The city of Gandwald, even from far up in the sky, can be seen to have a weird cohesion. Some homes are simple dwarven houses, formed from massive moulded concrete, others are layers of tiles held together by interlocking with one another, some are simple log cabins; all of them are coloured according to those around them, forming districts that cross the boundaries of styles. As they cross nearer, they are hit by the sound and smell of the ocean below. They step onto the shore where a massive wall has been erected around with a portcullis marking the only convenient way into the city without swimming. As they come near, guards’ step to attention and wave them over.

“Weapons to one side and bags to another” A guard indicates to the two tables besides them.

The pair does as they’re asked, and he waves a large tome with a bottle of ink embedded in the cover at them. A list of their possessions is written on the pages, he then presses his thumb onto a large black spot on the corner and the ink fades; he then flips back through the pages before running it across their weapons, making a list which he doesn’t erase, before taking a deep breath and paying attention to the pair “Right, names and any identification if you have it” He then steps away from their effects.

The pair introduce themselves before digging through their packs and presenting their identification.

The guard’s brow shoots up as he reads them but hands them over without problem “Right, have a good day. And please don’t cause trouble”

Roxie just scoffs as she shoulders her pack and continues with Ilia. They follow a map in the scroll and make their way through the packed streets and side roads to an island within the city. Whilst the entirety of the streets have been roughly smoothed and paved over, this section is left as a sudden mound on top of which a large cottage with a series of paved steps and a tiered garden, complete with a pond, have been made leading up to the door. The pair look between each other but continue, stepping onto the unguarded path.

Roxie pauses halfway and reaches into a nearby bush from which a person bursts out of. They’re clad from head to toe in navy blue cloth which hides all of their features, even doing a good job of hiding their eyes.

They stare at Roxie in an alert stance before slowly relaxing “Roxie, correct?”

“Yep. Here to help with your missing persons problem” Roxie notably looks down the path to the passer-by’s looking up to them with curiosity.

“Excellent—” They then gesture up the path “Lets discuss further, inside”

They follow them into the cottage, Roxie barely catching sight of someone emerging from the grass to the take position in the bush.

The person leads then through a hallway and into a cosy living room with plush sofas and carpet. In an armchair facing the window out is Till, looking heartier than Roxie saw her last.

She quirks a brow to the person who lead them in as he kneels besides her before turning her attention to Roxie “Good evening Miss Aultflight, and companion?”

Ilia walks up to her and offers her hand “I am Ilia Griffin, pleasure to meet you, miss?”

She shakes her hand before gesturing to the sofa “Till. Now take a seat, I assume you’ve been given the details of why we asked for you?”

Ilia side eyes Roxie “I haven’t”

“We can go over them whilst you update me on any changes” Roxie drops her pack before slumping into the sofa.

Till takes a sip of her tea before responding “The blacksmith and his supplies are still missing and no bounty within shackle circles was put up for either. The other dozen or so people are also still missing, though the last few have been SC’s” She notices Roxie and Ilia’s confused looks and iterates “Special combatants, people who have training in use of powers to fight”

Roxie and Ilia share a look “Oh, that’s worrying”

“Yeah, but that also means that there have been a few witnesses who claim to have seen them being dragged away by a pair of people with wings—” She winces as she pauses for a second “And a massive hulking figure with bull horns”

“Seems like they finally woke the minotaurs up then” Roxie looks between Till and Ilia who have her earlier look “Fates, it’s been too long since I was told. Basically, they’re just made of meat, bones and magic. Don’t have any organs and are supposed to be accompanied by an angel”

Till turns to the person “Juniper, tell the other aids”

They nod before pulling up a panel from the floor and diving in.

Roxie and Ilia share another look after they disappear before Roxie asks, “Any idea where we can start?”

“Honestly, no. That’s why I had a local vigilante dragged in. Donovan!” She leans around her chair to shout this into the kitchen behind.

After a moment of clattering, Donovan emerges from the cellar trying to wipe away the beer he spilled over his already dirty shirt. He looks to have recently dragged through a hedge multiple times; his clothes are frayed at the edges; his hair is a mess and he’s completely covered in dirt and scars topped with a crooked nose. He ruffles his black hair before falling into the sofa opposite Roxie and Ilia.

“Despite his. Everything—” She gives him a pointed look which he responds with a grin “He’s one of the most far connected individuals within the city”

Everyone turns to him, mostly in disbelief.

“Right, whatchu want?” He claps and rubs his hands together as his sits upright.

Roxie shakes her head before asking “I guess the first call will be to if there’s any strange shifting of large amounts of meat within the city”

“What? Like meat creatures?” He tilts his head as he asks.

Roxie flatly looks at him whilst Till puts her face in her hand to muffle a chuckle “No, deliveries”

He relaxes back into the sofa with his arms behind his head “There’s been a lot of smugglers who’ve just up ‘n changed loyalty to some stranger asking for shit tonnes of meat” He shrugs “Wouldn’t be the first weirdo with strange pets”

Ilia asks Till “And you let that happen?”

She sighs and closes her eyes as she explains “I assure you, that I have been the most successful in dealing with the shackle market than any of my predecessors. It’s easier to let the shifting loyalty do the culling than try and wrench them out”

“Anyways, is anyone becoming mysteriously weak?” Roxie asks, getting everyone’s attention.

“We’ve had a plague hit the far side of town, which spreads rather slowly” Till shakes her head at Roxie’s frown “We thought we had just acted fast enough to stop it. Don’t forget that not all of us are as familiar with these people and how they operate”

Roxie accepts a cup of tea that’s handed to her by another aide that comes through “Has anyone with spirit noticed their reserves dropping quickly whilst there?”

“Three was there?” Till looks down to the original one who had returned at some point.

They nod before elaborating “They did not mention their spirit reserved dropping beyond use”

“So that’s not likely to be them then” Roxie relaxes back before asking “Is there anywhere for us to stay?”

Till points upwards “I have Guest bedrooms you can use”

“Thanks—” She rubs her face and tries to wake up “Actually, any people you can spare?”

Till perks up and slowly turns to Donovan “I believe he will be an alright help”

He looks over the rim of a beer mug at Roxie and Ilia who both frown.