There was a ritual of sorts that Sev, Derivan, Vex, and Misa had started, now. They'd started it ever since they'd learned that the emptiness of the night sky wasn't the way it was supposed to look — ever since they'd learned that it used to be full of stars. They'd tried to tell others, of course; Max, the Guildmaster, the villagers. But no one else had been able to retain any information they tried to share, no matter what combination of skills they tried; whatever kind of infolock this was, it seemed different in some way than the ones they'd dealt with before.

Even now, after removing the lock — if that was indeed what they had done — they could feel that slipping out of their minds again. It was so easy to look at the night sky and think that everything was normal; that the expanse of darkness above them was all there ever had been.

But it wasn't.

And so, every night, Derivan would cast the skill that was clearly meant to be [Starry Night], though the name of the skill hadn't fixed itself in the system. They would watch. They would grieve. They would try to remember, though the world clearly wanted them to forget.

This was just the first time they would be doing it with an audience.

The bandits had all been restrained again — most of them hadn't put up much of a struggle, surprisingly, though a number of them had certainly tried to run when they went to restrain them. They didn't make it very far before Misa appeared in their path, wielding her mace threateningly, and it didn't take much more than that for them to be cowed. It was one of the little tricks they'd figured out before heading out on this trip. Vex could fire an invisible [Mana Bolt], and Misa could block that attack, looking for all the world like she could teleport freely. Another layer of misdirection that was proving itself to be useful.

It helped that the bandit leader, Xothok, seemed resigned to whatever would happen. He didn't trust them, explicitly, but he wasn't fighting them, either. He was just... watching them, something unreadable in his eyes.

"Any idea what he's feeling?" Sev asked Derivan quietly. "He's just staring."

"He is... worried," Derivan said, glancing at the lizardkin. There was a brief flicker in his eyes. "He cares about his men. He regrets some of the things he has done, even if he feels he had no other choice. He feels hope, but he is angry that he feels that hope, because he has been burned on hope before. And... a small part of him feels fear, I think. He worries that if we are correct, then the crimes he has committed will have been for nothing."

"Physical Empathy is doing well for you," Misa noted, a hint of surprise in her voice.

"I am not completely certain, of course," Derivan admitted. "There are many small details. I can feel the way his heart beats. His posture is guarded. The stat helps me interpret these things, but my own views are still imposed on them."

"It seems about right to me," Sev said with a sigh. "We're going to need to look into what he said about the Elyran branch of the Guild. They shouldn't have turned them away like that, not if they were looking for a job. Or there's some information we're missing on what these guys did..."

"Sometimes Elyra overprioritises its nobles," Vex said, looking down. "They have to look like the best and the brightest. Nobility in Elyra is earned — it's not exclusively a right of birth. But the side effect is that the nobles hate it when someone that isn't a noble ranks higher than them."

"That sounds kind of fucked," Misa said with a frown, and Vex just shrugged, withdrawing into himself slightly. Derivan watched him with concern, moving over to take a seat next to the lizardkin.

"Perhaps we should move on," the armor offered after a moment. "We will have to go to Elyra and see what is happening in the Elyran branch for ourselves; further speculation now will always be incomplete."

"I'd like to move on," Vex said quietly. Sev glanced at Misa, and the both of them nodded.

Derivan cast [Starry Night].

Once again, that deep-blue fog began rolling in from the edges of the clearing, past the slightly alarmed cries of the bandits; more than one of them pulled their limbs back from the tendrils of fog, though Derivan made sure not to let the fog conceal any of them. Instead, he focused the spell upward, allowing the fog to blend almost seamlessly into the night sky.

A rather unique point for the Sunlit Forest, however, was that the bioluminescent gold of the leaves shone right through the fog like it wasn't even there. They glittered in the breeze, looking for all the world like someone had painstakingly painted the veins of every individual leaf on a canvas.

Small, flickering fireballs began to appear within the fog. Derivan kept the dial on the size small, as he always did; instead, he began to make more and more of the stars appear, until the fog was littered with countless, tiny specks.

A breeze blew through the clearing, and the leaves rustled, swaying in the fog. The stars stirred, swirling within the confines of the spell.

Just for a moment, the painting came to life.

Even the bandits had gone largely silent, where they'd previously been talking with one another, worried about what might happen to them. Now they were all just staring at the canvas in the sky that Derivan had created. Xothok, in particular, seemed taken aback by the sight.

Vex was the first to let out a breath.

"I never get tired of seeing this," he said quietly.

The others nodded silently. They watched it for a moment more, with only Misa sparing an occasional glance at the bandits to make sure none of them used the moment to try to escape, but none of them did — they all seemed equally enamored by the sight.

Except for Xothok, who was staring at it with one fist clenched, gritting his teeth together.

"Why the fuck does this seem familiar," he growled out. Sev and the others glanced at each other, and Derivan cut the spell.

They'd tried showing this skill to the Guildmaster, too, exactly like this. Her reaction had been remarkably similar to Xothok's — bewilderment, and a certain frustrated anger. There was wonder there too, but there was a deeper sense of pain. Some part of her seemed to recognize that she'd lost something precious to her. It was the closest they'd been able to get to explaining to her what they'd discovered.

She didn't understand, per se. But she understood that something important had transpired, and promised to leverage all the Guild resources she could into uncovering what had happened. Velykos, the stone elemental priest — they'd made sure he was using [The Walls Have Ears] too, when they spoke to the Guildmaster about it. It was the best they could do.

With Xothok, on the other hand...

"What do you mean, it seems familiar?" Sev asked.

"Exactly what I said." Xothok glared at him. "Did you do something to me? Was that a mental spell?"

"It was not," Derivan said, though he seemed concerned that that was the first conclusion Xothok had jumped to. "It was a visual effect. A reminder of sorts."

"What the fuck kind of a reminder was that," Xothok seethed, but he didn't really seem angry. Derivan watched him for a moment more.

"You are angry because it made you sad," he observed after a moment. "And that made you feel vulnerable."

"Like hell it did," Xothok spat.

"Derivan," Vex said awkwardly. "That's one of the things we don't say out loud."

"Oh." Derivan paused and looked at Xothok. "My apologies."

Xothok didn't answer him, preferring to stare off into the distance instead, and Sev sighed. He was hoping he'd gotten through to the man a bit with the offer of food, but for all that he seemed calmer than before, he didn't seem any more inclined to talk or share with them. He glanced through his system messages — Max had messaged him to let him know there would be a delay, and that she would meet up with them come the morning.

"I don't think we can get anything more here," Sev said tiredly. "It's been a long day. Let's get some rest and set up a night watch. Derivan, you okay with taking the night shift again?"

"Of course," the armor said. "I do not need to sleep."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you should always take the full duty," Sev muttered.

"I'll stay up with him for a shift," Vex volunteered. "Um. It's only fair. And I'm used to staying up late, anyway. And lizardkin don't need that much sleep."

"You only needed that first sentence," Sev said, amused.

"I appreciate it," Derivan said, chuckling.

And with that, they retired for the night.

Max arrived in the early hours of the morning, just as the glow began to fade from the leaves of the Sunlit Forest. She grinned and waved when she caught sight of Derivan standing guard over the bandits — Vex was next to him, having curled up onto the rock at some point, with a blanket pulled over his body.

"Did he fall asleep out here?" she asked, glancing with amusement at the lizardkin.

"He was very sleepy, despite his insistence on not being sleepy," Derivan said with a chuckle. "It is not the first time he has done this. Did you know he cast a [Sleep] spell on himself once by accident?"

"I did not know that," Max said brightly. "But that's kind of great. Are these the bandits I need to pick up?"

"Yes," Derivan said. "Twenty-one of them in total. We have some concerns we wanted to share, however..."

Derivan quickly briefed Max on the situation. She'd heard a little bit about what happened from Sev, apparently, but hadn't gotten all the details over the system; she frowned when she heard about the Elyran guild apparently rejecting these bandits, and about the particularly stubborn one that was Byrrhon.

"Really?" she asked. "That's... it's weird that we haven't heard anything about that. All the reports from the Elyran branch have seemed normal."

"We will be investigating," Derivan said with a nod. "It seemed strange to us, too."

"Well, let the Guildmaster know what you find," Max said. "Or let me know. Either or. We're trusting you to handle things in Elyra."

"What will you be doing with the bandits? Can you handle them all by yourself?" Derivan asked curiously. Max grinned.

"Trust me," she said. "I have my ways."

Max did not, in fact, have her ways.

It wasn't that she couldn't handle the bandits by herself — she was pretty sure she could do it with her eyes closed, if she had to, though she didn't particularly want to test that theory.

It was just that this was an escort quest, functionally, and she hated escort quests. She got bored! It was so much travel, and not enough teleportation. She knew, logically, that [Right Time, Right Place] cost her more the more she used it; she knew that she should be using it less, despite how convenient the skill was.

But still, she'd gotten used to teleporting around, and now mundane travel made her bones ache. And she wasn't even 30 yet!

Bah. Whatever. There were other ways to entertain herself on the trip.

Max sidled up to Xothok, who stared back stoically at her, looking only the faintest bit disgruntled. "So," Max said cheerfully. "Tell me about yourself!"

"Do you think we should feel bad for the bandits?" Sev asked conversationally.

"What?" Misa stared at Sev. "Why? Max is awesome."

"She is," Sev acknowledged. "But she gets bored easily. It'll take like two seconds for her to get bored here."

"What does she do when she's bored?" Misa asked curiously. Sev grinned.

"Really aggressive friendship. Trust me. She'll have their barriers down in no time."