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Marigold	Lycia, March of Thria, near the Ostian border      Remains of an unnamed hamlet.      Once again, Roy's army has camped somewhere conveniently near a warpgate and sent out word for a rendezvous. Wet wind blown in from the southern ocean pools against the rolling northern mountains here, robbing rightful rain from Sacae, tinting the air with a faint shade of refreshing fog, and making the meadowy earth always a little soft underfoot.      With the sun a little paler, the grass and trees get greener to compensate; the ankle-deep wildflowers by the natural gate (just a spatial tear in a meadow) still more vibrant. Once again, there's little sign that anyone before you has ever used it. Not even a dirt path leads from it where you've been told to go.      You can smell ash from further out than you smelled the campfire before. That sensation has just enough time to develop into a dread before the sparse trees give way to scorched black.      This was a small village once, smaller even than Laphet where you first met Guinivere. Now thatched roofs have turned to cold cinders; fields of barley and cabbage are trampled and soot-black; rough masonry walls still stand as hollowed-out shells of homes. The lack of corpses is the only mercy.      "It was torched before we got here," Marcus, the gray-haired knight, says from horseback. He must have been patrolling; he's the first to come alongside the group. "There's nothing we could do. The wyvern riders go where they please now. And when everyone's scared into their castles..."      He gestures east with the back of his hand, towards Araphen, and shakes his head. If Bern deploys its dragons again, castle walls will be no defense.
Marigold	Marcus leads you into the former hamlet's central square before dismounting, where people have set up their tents and made a little campfire of their own. It feels a little perverse. The mood's a little tight and solemn, but the troops are trying to keep their own spirits up.      Sue, the Sacaen archer you'd rescued from Castle Thria, is caring for the horses while chatting to Shanna the pegasus-rider, although really Shanna's doing most of the talking. "... and you know how most shoes are made from steel?" "Yes." "Well, in Ilia we have to use silver, because..." Sue doesn't seem to mind.      Rutger orbits silently nearby, leaning against Merlinus's wagon and listening to the women with a vaguely contented air. There's a little bit more sparkling life in their eyes than before, and especially when they wave at their employer Lilian. Clarine, in turn, orbits near them and crosses her arms grumpily.      While Chad helps Dieck roast venison skewers over the fire, Lucius very intently scribes something in a gold-bound book with consecrated ink. Lugh, ornamented up with his psychonaut merit badges, looks over the Father's shoulder in awed fixation; he only looks up to wave and beam at the group (especially Flamel!).      While the young knights Lance and Alen help Seneschal Merlinus unload bedrolls and trail rations, he keeps an ear on the conversation between the lords nearby- Hector, Roy, and Guinivere with her lady-in-waiting Elen.      "I'm sorry for the unhappy meeting-place. We'll be in the March of Ostia soon," says Roy, slipping around the fire and holding out a hand to shake in re-welcome. For a usually-bright-eyed teenager, his smile is familiar but worn. "It can't come too soon. We've just been discussing how we could more swiftly persuade Etruria to intervene against Bern's invasion. I have connections with Cecilia, their Mage-General; and Elimine's church is centered there, so Elen and Lucius may have sway as well, but..."      'But', Guinivere's shallow smile says behind him, nothing is ever a certainty.      https://youtu.be/kSeeyH3jXPs
Flamel Parsons	There are places. Places where homes are shattered and houses are wrecks. Places where parents lose children and children lose parents. Desolate places of heat, and hunger, and isolation, and helplessness, and insect bites. Flamel knows one kind of them, and this is another kind, but there is a kinship between them. In the kind he knows, there's something you do: You *counsel*, as a counselor. And no matter what, no matter where, no matter when, that means having an acoustic guitar, strumming simple chords and softly speak-singing lyrics that will have someday have meanings to their listeners that can never be said in words.     A summer camp is a hell of a thing, no matter the culture or era.     He strums softly and sings. No need for Lugh to call out and wave, he's been here a while. Probably been the redeeming point for five complex interlocking scavenger hunts. "And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis... Restore the temple of Isis at Memphis..." He softly sings.
Aidan Proudpick	Aidan needed something else to think about before going to sleep and waking up. Something else that drove him. So, he started to think about the army from Lycia, the Gale Empire, and what he could learn from them. What he could do. Between this, training, and touristing, he's gotten more and more lax on attempting guard duty for the traveling Clarine, waiting only for moments of actually meeting others, like the meeting at the castle. His first thought was to bring a barrel of beer. Then he realized that would be an exceptionally bad idea without permission from Roy. Thus, he comes bearing cheap red wine that can be diluted. Having just come from the Gale Empire, having finally worn a group down to letting him into their nightly game of windball, he's wearing his more open and loose outfit, carrying a sack with only two bottles. That should be enough to pass around and water down, but not get anyone actually drunk. He is expecting another night just like last time. Quiet. Able to talk. A time to talk with soldiers and learn something from them. When he steps out of the gate, he immediately smells the ash, and the scorched trees. Immediately, Aidan starts into a lope, jogging out into the clearing to the village. Cold, a bodyless wasteland, a new freshly torched village. "How... How could they? Last time they were just going for Lady Guinivere, right? It was just to get her jewel." His vision pans over the carnage, the trampled fields. Even he only fought other soldiers. Only attacked military airships. His whole goal in coming here was to talk about what the people felt. He hadn't seen this sort of damage in years. He had almost forgotten people were capable of it. A struggle ripples up Aidan's back, to his shoulders, pushing a tight lid on his anger. A reminder. Of what they stole. Excitement and vigor leaks out of Aidan into a somber walk as he sits down at the campfire, dropping the bag at his feet, cheap wine forgotten. The sound of the guitar from Flamel Parsons soothes the anger back down. He glances over at Dieck, "Yer more experienced in this sort of thing. What do you think the people of Bern feel about this? The citizens. I'm so used to just knight on knight fighting."
Kale Hearthward	Kale arrives with the other Paladins. "... It's this bad, that they're burning villages..." he says, as he looks around. He takes a few moments to reach out with his recently-opened third eye - the village looks abandoned, but best to make sure that there's no people awaiting help... or foes lurking nearby. With that done, he goes to introduce himself. "Greetings. Kale Hearthward, Paladins Search and Rescue," he says. "Here to help." He notices Aidan, and then promptly and purposefully ignores him.
Odette Raskins	After all the dreariness and bloodletting Odette's seen in past days, a small part of her is already looking forward to the scent of the campfire hitting her. Roasted meat, light snacks, a little bit of lounging around before getting back to work, cold dead air... Maybe the knot in her chest was a warning about what she'd see, actually. Quickening her pace, the EMT clutches the strap to her bag more tightly as she hurries through the trees, wincing occasionally at the branches in her way snapping back against her as she rushes right on through to the erased village. "... Darn it. This must've happened a good while ago, then, if... Darn it." Inhaling lightly through her teeth, Odette's posture sags just a bit as she replies to Marcus, looking eastwards when he gestures that way. Intuiting his meaning easily enough, she lowers her hand from her bag with another discomforted noise, then follows him to the rest of the group with a cautious gaze still directed to the skies. One day, she'll be faster. She just needs to win that thing first. This isn't the time to mull over what-ifs, though, and she has work to do! Or people to get nosy around and stuff to distract herself with, anyway, as she drifts over towards Lucius and Lugh when she sees that gold-bound looking book in his hands. "Hi, Father Lucius. Hey, Lugh. What do you go-um. What are you working on there?" She asks, not turning into a tongue-tied mess around him for once in recent memory. "It looks fancy... Is it a journal or something?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel looks to Aidan Proudpick! After one of the refrains, he offers some insight. "In a lot of worlds, there are nations that do... I suppose you'd think of it as hurting other nations in some complicated ways to help their local merchantry and nobility gain a competitive edge."     His strumming gets a little softer for a minute. "But the citizenry aren't really involved. The way it's structured, the civilians are always fighting their own battles. To keep themselves mentally sane and materially safe, they focus on the things that happen day-to-day, right in front of them. It's how a mind endures. Even if they contribute a little to national violence... they gotta put food on the table. One day they'll donate to a relief effort, to do their best. Can you blame them? Psychology comes from the material world."     He stops his strumming for a moment, puts a finger to his cheek, and looks up thoughtfully. He taps it there a few times, and says, "I think that's probably what it's like in Bern? That's what it's like in most empires, or post-empire nations. I bet it'll be like that for another few hundred years, in Bern." Then he resumes his singing a little. "Make it whole again if you can. Stand in the smoke and say some prayers, wave your hand..."
Dysnomia	These kinds of horrors were becoming a routine sight for Mia in Lycia, but that hardly made it better. Dysnomia fell in beside Marcus, as the march from the gate carried them there. Her face was grim. "They don't have faith in their ability to occupy it..." Is Mia's observation, "...Or they feel no need to. We call it a 'scorched earth strategy'." She surveyed the carnage. "The point." She continues, relentless. "Is to make the land unliveable for anyone. There's not much that's more demoralizing."     "They're not here for the land, or the people. They're just here to subdue Lycia. What could they want this badly...?" Usually, the land and the population was the point. Exploitable labor, resources and somewhere to expand. Fortresses were one thing, but villages like this..."I guess the new general on their offensive is no more gentle than Narcian was."     When they'd finally arrived at the camp, and the other elites began to filter out to talk with their friends among Roy's entourage, Mia stayed by Marcus, still looking over the blackened landscape. She wondered whether it'd been done by human hands, or--"You know, I was surprised." She clasped her hands behind her back, eyes narrowing into a squint. "Lord Roy talked to me about what you told him. But for the life of me, I just couldn't figure out what it meant."     "Of everything I'd hear in this world, I think that was the thing I least expected." She glanced sideways then, at Marcus. "Just what made you say that, Marcus?"
Trudy Grimm	The Black Knight's armor has been repaired since Thria, no longer filled with holes and broken arrowshafts. He leaves the forest-covered hills and into the scorched meadow around the hamlet, coming to a stop. Trudy is seated on his arm, almost like a pet bird, though those in Roy's army have long since become familiar with the true dynamic between the witch and the knight.     Her ever-present smile fades to a more neutral expression, green eyes skimming over the smoldering ruin until her gaze rests on the elder knight Marcus when he speaks. Closing her eyes, the witch lets out a long, low exhale, "I imagine it would be little more than a repeat of history, yes."     Lifting her hands, she calls up the Death Rune between them and closes her eyes. After a moment, she disperses the sickly green sigil, "At least it seems like no one was killed here--" She glances towards Marcus, "I can't imagine someone like Narcian would care to cover his atrocities by taking the bodies with him when he leaves."     "A man like that would rather others see his handwork, hmm?" Grimnir speaks up from behind the Black Knight, shuffling around to one side. When he stops, he leans on his staff, stroking his beard with his other hand as he beholds the ashen townscape.     "Unfortunate that livelihoods and homes were destroyed. Bern spreads suffering for suffering's sake, it seems."     Trudy hops out of the Black Knight's arms, lifting a hand as she steps around him and towards the main Lycian camp, "Check around with my Knight. See if you find anything useful. Or you could just be Old at Sir Marcus."     "Sir Hector!" the witch calls out to the old warrior as she approaches, "How are you feeling today? Lady Guinivere, Sir Roy." She pauses--     "Wait, where's Lady Clarine?" It strikes her that the recently rescued noble isn't here at the big meeting about approaching Etruria through Ostia. The resident Ostian is already here, after all.
Desire Stars	Ash is an unmistakable scent. There are subtle variations, but all of them are identifiable as 'ash.' Even Neon, the sheltered 'family treasure,' finds her footfalls leaden as she approaches. And when everyone's scared into their castles...      "I wonder if this isn't 'evidence' for his 'trial,'" Ace openly muses. "If, somehow, all of this is meant to answer that fundamental question."      "It says more about him than any of the people on the receiving end," Neon asserts with a quiet, bitter sadness.      "Sure," agrees Ace. "But he isn't doing it alone. Even right now, there are people who might not 'get' what he's doing. And the people who do might feel like they're too far in to stop."      "Does it matter if that's what he's condeming?" asks Neon.      "Not to those people, I'm sure," Ace answers with a nod towards the smoldering remains. "But it matters plenty to him, and he's the one with the army. 'Never did the king sigh, but with a general groan.'"      "What?"      "It means 'when powerful people are unhappy, regular people suffer for it.'"      "...yeah. Look, there's Roy up ahead. We should see what's up." We've just been discussing how we could more swiftly persuade Etruria to intervene against Bern's invasion. I have connections with Cecilia, their Mage-General; and Elimine's church is centered there, so Elen and Lucius may have sway as well, but...      "But we've been too late, every time; if Bern didn't tear the place down, they got to the people we were going to ask for help." Neon pauses, chewing her lip nervously. "Assuming we're not... too late, this time... Well, what have you come up with so far?"
Blemishine	"Even small villages like this..."     When they meet up with Marcus, Maria - in her usual white armoring - regards the wanton destruction with an unpleasant frown. With those same golden eyes that have been used to pinpoint weaknesses so keenly and find openings to succeed, she can take in every last detail of it. Where the fires licked away at, where boots and hooves stomped down, the time that must've passed since... and imagine what it all could've been as before. She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it and shakes her head.     "...I'm sure those in Ilia and Sacae weren't treated any differently. It's good to see you though, Sir Marcus."     Onward and forward, and as they go, she picks up on what Ace in particular says, her expression going somewhere between contemplative and reminsicing. "Those 'powerful people' might just be worried about keeping their power and flaunting their station, or they might have ideals they can't give up on... but it's always ones who aren't involved at all who pay the biggest prices."     But she perks up somewhat upon Roy's greeting, all the way up to offering a smile to him as she happily accepts a handshake with him. "No apologies needed, Lord Roy. I hope you're doing well enough. Not pushing yourself too hard, are you?" The slight shift in her smile towards the apologetic shows that she probably understands he can't afford to not.     "It sounds like you've had plenty you've had to think over. Hopefully, spreading the plan-making across everyone'll make it easier! Having those connections should be awfully useful," Blemishine nods with some hopefulness, even though she knows as well as Guinivere does that they won't know until they get there.     "Though I'd like to hear, what kind of issues are you expecting will come up negotiating with them? Ah, you know-- if any."
Petra Soroka	Petra has heard a lot of these names before. Spoken mostly in warmly fond tones that are vanishingly and preciously rare, Lilian's occasional bits and pieces of tales and connections she brought back from Lycia were known to Petra in her peripheral senses; never something she pried into, but the names were internalized as people who brought out the best in Lilian and provided some manner of sword-filled enrichment environment for her. Petra had, therefore, assumed that these were names of people off-limits to her, because anyone who brings out the good in Lilian could not be exposed to the girl who brought out the worst. Presumably, they were peers of Lilian's in some way, and Petra would just appreciate the good moods they inspired from a distance.     Then, *other* Elites mentioned them. And Petra decided that if *those* bottom-of-the-barrel losers were able to share those spaces without ruining Lilian's mood, then Petra could also show up-- and it means that it's a *mission*, rather than something more selective. Petra's good at missions!     She did her research before coming, of course, because showing up out of nowhere without a clue to demand that she be provided with stray enrichment is the kind of soulless parasitism that she works hard to avoid now, but her source for a rundown on the ongoing war effort was *Tennant*. Somewhere around the ten minute mark on their explanation of the insufficiencies of the anti-capitalist education among peasantry in the Lycian territory of Thria and how they really think Hector is coming around on the idea that the true villain in Tom and Jerry is the car dependent infrastructure that the generic suburban house is simultaneously dependent on and isolated by, their voice fuzzes out into a static haze and Petra's eyes gloss over.     And so, Petra exits the warpgate without being aware that a war is going on.     Still in the achy middle phases of healing up from her fight for Quicknest, the first part of Petra's outfit that sticks out is her gauze, bruises, and scars; though they're distinctly different from anything that the soldiers would be familiar with, given the variety of often-magical sources they came from. Besides that, she's wearing an outfit that's defined by its synergistic rattiness with her own: a vintage green and gold band tee, design faded to near-illegibility and sleeves and neckline stretched out from overuse, hanging loose in a way that shows an edge of her compression tank top beneath for the suggestion of layers, tucked haphazardly into jeans. Along with her typical combat boots, it works, somehow, in some vaguely grunge cross between going to a concert and coming back from the gym. Not that any of the Lycians will have context for that. "It can't come too soon. We've just been discussing how we could more swiftly persuade Etruria to intervene against Bern's invasion."     Oh, fuck, there's an invasion. Petra knows Roy's position, and can tell he's someone important, and of course Petra should talk to him and introduce herself-- but knowing all that makes it a little embarrassing, especially when the torrent of *lore* names made it abruptly clear how little Petra actually retained or understood about the situation here. She has to do it anyways, but she does it in the teeth-gritted momentum-stumbling way of launching yourself facefirst through a spiderweb.     "Hi. Uh. I'm Petra. Hey." Good start. Let's see the followthrough, Petra. "I'm here for the... war...?"
Petra Soroka	Petra blinks and tries to backtrack immediately, her awkwardly half-raised hand sweeping right past Roy's and ending up laced in her hair on the side of her head, twisting her finger through a lock. "Er, I mean, like, to help, with your fighting and stuff. I'm a, uh, known factor to mmmmost of the people here, so if you need someone to vouch for me, they probably can." Actually, who's here? Petra pauses to reconsider that statement. "Except, um, not Proudpick. I've tried to kill him a bunch of times. But you don't have to worry about me doing that here."     "Anyways," Good social interaction! Petra brings her hand down into a lame little thumbs up to signal... something, and after over half a minute of conversing, finally realizes she should go in for a handshake. Hector, Guinivere, and Elen get a little wave too, being close enough for her introduction, or a slightly sweaty handshake if they prefer. "Cool meeting you. I'll be, um, at your disposal."     Currently without having built any support ranks yet-- with the NPCs, at least; Petra is the type of girl to get a +10 to hit rate when adjacent to someone she likes-- Petra ends up gravitating towards Flamel, of all people. Not to say anything, at first, and really, it's not that she's drawn towards *him*, specifically. It's the guitar in his hands.     Petra leans her back against one of the few still-standing charred masonry walls nearby, chin tilted down. Drifting into quiet for a minute, Petra just listens to Flamel strum and sing, dragging the tip of her boot through looping patterns in the ash. It's a ritual, meditative in an mental rather than spiritual sense, as Petra lowers intangible emotional barriers to realign herself to the surrounding environmental attitude, eyes flickering briefly closed.
Lilian Rook	The opening of Warpgates along the way is something that Lilian will spend serious brain cycles contemplating when it isn't ostensibly the least important thing going on with this entire world. If she were a little more spiritual, she'd see it as one or more gods opening the path before her, but given that she isn't the type to imagine heavenly powers being given to mysteriously supporting her way, she imagines the gravitas that freshly wells up in her before every trip, new and different each time, has more to do with Roy's uncanny magnetism.     Though she's been seen in armour twice and in a negotiating table outfit once, Lilian continues to keep to her green-grey-black travelling cloak on the trail. Her gradual push into less old-fashioned clothing out in the Multiverse appears to have both everything and nothing at all to do with the private joy she feels in getting to wear it here, wandering the grassy roads on fine leather boots with the weight of a sword at her back and a lily in her hair. Far from dropping the bit after the first meeting by the fire, she seems to have fully taken to it as an activity with intrinsic merit. It gives her a consistent character design to come to camp with.     'It was torched before we got here'     "Well, there was one other thing you could have told me, and I'd have liked to hear that far less."     'The wyvern riders go where they please now. And when everyone's scared into their castles...'     "It won't be long now until we'll have the ability to do something about it. I'm glad to see that you already know the single most vital piece of information to spread as far as possible. I'd expect nothing less."     Seeing Rutger incrementally more moisturized and thriving buouys a smile up to Lilian's lips as she passes, just before she recalls the last time they'd spoken at length, her clumsy misuse of words in a hurry, and the embarrassing memory--                 -----[stop]-----     "Fuck me oh my god augh! What was I thinking?! Why did I even say it that way?! What was-- nnnnnnnnn--!! Oh my god I totally sounded like an idiot! They totally think I'm a fucking freak! I'm going to scream! I'm going to scream and then I'm going to explode and they're going to see the mushroom cloud from fucking Bern I could just--!"                 -----[start]-----     --is quick to come and go, released like a leaf on a breeze. Clarine's pouty fidgeting is more important; she has to tilt her head in just the right way and give her a certain self-satisfied look as she comes up to Rutger, places a felt pouch in their hands, and holds them slightly too long while saying "Try this out after the usual. I happened to think of you when I saw it." Which is, all things considered, either very mild for Lilian's track record of petty feuds, or bizarrely cruel.     'I have connections with Cecilia'     "--Huh?! How did you--?!" Lilian turns around in an instant.     'their Mage-General'     "Oh." Lilian coughs quietly to herself and walks it off like a cat having just fallen off a short ledge. "Then you've been keeping busy, Lord Roy. I'm happy to hear it, despite the dark times." she says, and frightening as always, means it without any veiled layer of feeling. "Of course I'll tell you as many times as you enjoy that I've never come across a 'but' I couldn't take; whatever doubts you harbour will be something I resolve in the fullness of time, as I always do." The fond way she doesn't quite smile at him as she welcomes herself in is unusual. "But I rather like that part of you that wants to stay sharp in the interim; even if it's only to do 'something' in the hours you can."
Lilian Rook	'I'm so used to just knight on knight fighting.'     "When in God's name has that ever been relevant to you? I'd be shocked if you've ever fought one, grimy little treehouse rebel that you are, and you've certainly never been one."     '... It's this bad, that they're burning villages...'     "They've no intent to occupy in a governmental capacity." Lilian says to Kale in a totally different tone. "Whatever Zephiel wants from Lycia, it's not to expand Bern. You can't do that if the farmers don't return to their fields."     'Can you blame them? Psychology comes from the material world.'     The pause in Flamel's gentle strumming brings Lilian to a stop slightly before his words do. "I . . . don't know. Should I? Would it matter if I did or didn't? I've never been good at not blaming the ordinary folk, but being in a room with that man for even just that short length of time was . . . enough, to dispel any ideas that he is accountable in his heart to anyone."     As Dysnomia and Trudy contemplate it further, Lilian glances to the trampled, soot-blackened fields, and shakes her head. "Of course people are suffering. And of course it's coldly, pragmatically cruel. But you've seen plenty of dead soldiers too; I was there." she says. "At no point forget that human beings dying is the actual cost of war. Above anything else, that is what matters. Don't be too eager to treat it as a given."     'I'm here for the... war...?'     As naturally as breathing and automatic as blinking, Lilian says "Please be patient with her. She was abandoned and grew up in the wilderness, so she struggles with behaving like a human from time to time."     That aside, Shanna still having subject matter to nerd out over in regards to her military profession is actually starting to win over Lilian's attention, despite not at all being a horse girl, and it elicits a nagging question besides. More important is that she secure a venison skewer first, both because she happens to be hungry, and as an easy excuse to chat up Dieck about how he healed up after last time and what he's been up to, and to lean over Lucius' shoulder (at a respectful remove from paper) and ask him what he's writing.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel stops, briefly, to tune the guitar. He looks brightly to Lilian, with a friendly smile. "You know, that's a good point! Maybe 'can you blame them' should actually mean 'do you have the strength to blame them?' You said that and now you have me thinking. Maybe you have to be... a certain kind of strong person to look a cobbler or a scribe in the eye and tell them to be better, geopolitically-speaking. I don't know if that's how it is, but it's probably worth me thinking about." He finishes up tuning, tapping the neck of the guitar idly, swaying his head back and forth a bit.     "Do you think Zephiel thinks that way, when he looks at us? I wonder..." He gets back to singing. "Their hunger like a worm inside them, no sacred place could be denied them..."
Marigold	A deep, relaxed sigh comes from the bottom of Dieck's lungs when Flamel starts playing. It only takes one hand to cook skewers; the other clasps Flamel's shoulder fondly. "The people?" he says, looking back at Aidan. "Why d'you wanna know? Doesn't matter if they hate us or love us, if their soldiers still kill us."      But he chews on it for a second longer, and then shakes his head as he turns back to the fire. "Like Flamel says," he murmurs over the strumming. "War's never unpopular until you start losing. Probably most of them don't even think about it. Why should they?"      Recognizing Odette's state, Dieck foists the first venison skewer onto her- crispy, juicy, decorated with foraged mushrooms and onions, still a little too hot to eat- and winks. "Here. You look faint." Lucius covers his mouth and silently laughs.      "Why, it's a tome," Lucius says, gracefully moving on and turning the book around to show Odette (and Lilian, when she makes her way over). An elaborate gold-inked diagram swallows up most of the page, and the translucence of the previous page shows that each one is inked with the same design.      "Otherworld mages don't use these, do they? But look. It's a magical diagram, missing just one or two strokes. Spells that would take minutes by hand take just a gesture or two with these. Of course, the human form is already a perfect diagram for itself..." He smiles indulgently while taking the book back to resume scribbling. "... so for healing and other such things of the body, one may instead use a staff."      "In some ways, it's a creative exercise. Ambiguity in the design creates versatility, but it demands more skill, and costs speed. Just as I'm sure you've made tradeoffs deciding what to put in that bag of yours."
Marigold	Roy's eyebrows lift when Kale approaches, but he doesn't flinch from the handshake. "It's good to meet you, Kale. 'Search and rescue'... I wish there were more occasion for that than there has been." Kale's psychic scanning finds no-one in the vicinity, and it also finds a pervasively somber mood.      "Not pushing yourself too hard, are you?" Roy's shy-guilty smile speaks painful volumes. His new shoes are already well-broken-in. "I'm trying not to," he says, by which it's clear he means 'I'm trying to redefine 'too hard''.      When Neon and Blemishine ask their questions, Roy struggles for a moment to answer. "Ah, well... that's not the right framing of..." Guinivere lays a hand on his shoulder from behind, and gracefully intercedes: "The question isn't how we can entice them to intervene, but why they haven't done so already. They're aware of the invasion. It's in their interest to stymie Bern. We have our guesses..."      She glances back at Hector, who nods, and then turns back to Neon with a gracious look. "... but we'll know more when we're back in Ostia. Lord Hector has observers in Etruria who can tell us of its internal affairs."      "Privately, it seems most likely to me that Etruria may be hoping Bern will tire itself out with its conquest of Lycia and then be vulnerable to counterattack. To gain its aid, we may have to demonstrate that this is after all a fight we could win." "And I'm telling you, Guin, you scare me a little. Assuming motives like that..." "It's how I'd think!" "Pfah, that's what worries me. Must run in the family." "Oh, off it."      "Why, it's our little witch," says the only person present who could convincingly call Trudy little. He grins in that lopsidedly uncle-like way he does. "I'm looking forward to seeing my homeland and my daughter again, that's how I'm doing. I think about Lilina and my legs don't ache half as much. Maybe you could teach her a thing or two? She's a real up-and-coming mage, she is."      "Wait, where's Lady Clarine?" "She said that talking about mere politics is beneath a noble," Roy says with an admirably straight face, "and went off to be near Rutger." He points across the campfire, to where Rutger and Clarine grumpily orbit each other at double arms' length.      No, not 'orbit' really. It's more like a cat seeing how close it can sneak up on a bird before the bird takes flight. Rutger, here, is distinctly not the predator.
Marigold	Coming straight off of the straining highbrow of 'being a little in over his head about geopolitics', Roy hears the first words out of Petra's mouth and some high-speed flywheel in his head comes to a hard and crunchy stop.      "Um." Light leaves the crystal-blue eyes of a boy three years younger than her. He is recalculating in real time how badly he's misunderstood Otherworld culture. "You're welcome, to, the war?" Roy's hand is limp and clammy in hers.      "Except, um, not Proudpick. I've tried to kill him a bunch of times."      Briefly unmoored from all mores and reason, Roy says "Oh. That's cool?" "It probably isn't cool," Hector sagely advises. "Oh. Okay."      He just sort of stands there, metaphorically drawn in pencil scribble, for a moment or three after Petra steps away.      "Is that really your type?" "... What?"      Rutger takes the pouch in both hands like a little treasure, and their eyes linger on the way Lilian touches their fingers in the process. They either pretend not to notice- or, impressively disciplined, actually don't notice- the way Clarine puffs out her cheeks and strikes a grumpy fists-balled arms-out pose.      "Oh," they say, in the manner of someone who never gets gifts. "Thank you." 'What's this' goes unasked, as they start opening it immediately. But just as Lilian's leaving:      "Ah-" they say, to arrest her attention. And in their eyes she can see what's to follow is a deeply serious question.      "Boyfriend or girlfriend?"
Marigold	Roy's smile is wobbly for more reasons than just Petra when he turns it on Lilian. He's guilty about undeserved praise. "Oh, no. She was my swordfighting teacher when I lived in Ostia, before Etruria called her back. I really haven't done much lately."      His arms cross over his stomach, and he smiles wider off to the side. "But... thank you. I'd be embarrassed if I weren't doing my best. You know how that is, don't you?"      "Mmmm. And sparing the people could be a tactical choice," Marcus says to Mia grimly, as he ties his horse's reins to a post. "A farmer without farmland is a mouth to feed. In the long run, we can't allow these people to die, but in the short run it'll weaken us further."      Her words make him step aside, away from the impromptu stable and the warmth of the campfire. He leans against a hollowed-out building and rubs the side of his face. "What I told Lord Roy? I don't know what you're..."      But he realizes, after a second, that the deflection won't work. He sighs, and glances off to make sure he won't be overheard.      "I... know, firsthand, that not all of 'your kind' hold evil in their hearts. You've proven yourself trustworthy in battle besides," the old man confides. "I told Lord Roy that someday you will be the only one who can counsel him, and that he should trust you when that day comes. That's all. You'll know that day when it comes. For the sake of those not present, I can't say much more. But in the present situation, I'm sure you can imagine."      - - - -      "Does that exercise have a name?" A beautiful, angelic voice interrupts Petra's meditation after a few respectful moments. When she opens her eyes, the most strikingly pretty priest she's ever seen is looking up at her from the fireside.      "I might, someday, have to try it. It seems wonderful."
Aidan Proudpick	Aidan glances at Kale, a groan of weary resignation that he is going to have to share this space with him. 'Disgusting. Loser.' At least he can't be stabbed here in the open. The glance at Petra is actually slightly less resigned and hostile. Ears rotate towards Flamel Parsons, then so does the rest of Aidan's head. He listens intently, as Aidan's awe of mentor figures drags him in. He nods slowly, trying to run that through what he already knows. "There is no evil..." Aidan mutters to himself, running through the logic train, "Zephiel is devoted to something. Soldiers follow him out of loyalty or just want to put food on the table. And the people can't look, because it would make them crazy." Putting it all into the basket of the Gale Empire. "One day they'll donate to a relief effort, to do their best." He is trying not to proc Petra's aggro radius as he asks, "Is it worth it, Mister Parsons? Trying to show people the violence? Trying to convince them?" He asks, already knowing the answer in his heart, but wanting it to be untrue. Aidan finds a tin mug, holding it between his knees as he bites down on the cork of the first wine bottle with his SQUIRREL TEETH and yanks it out. He takes the tiniest bit of it in a tin mug before setting it back near the fire. What could they want this badly...? "The Fire Emblem? It's gotta be the only thing they want. Keep pushing until we give it up?" "Unfortunate that livelihoods and homes were destroyed. Bern spreads suffering for suffering's sake, it seems." "I used to think of it that way. Just... evil. Bad. People who just want to spread pain and conquer. But it can't be just that, right? "When in God's name has that ever been relevant to you? I'd be shocked if you've ever fought one, grimy little treehouse rebel that you are, and you've certainly never been one." "It's just another way of saying Elite on Elite," this is becoming a trifecta. Aidan breathes in, then out. He can do this. He can prove them wrong. "You know. An analogy?" "Why d'you wanna know?" "Been dealing with my own sort of Zephiel. Trying to understand what goes on. Trying to prevent a war?" A scratch of the cheek. A shake of the head. He's doing that thing where's he's talking too much and not listening enough. "Why'd you become a mercenary?"
Trudy Grimm	When Clarine is pointed out; actively stalking Rutger, Trudy lets out a thoughtful noise. Lifting a hand, she flicks her fingers out. Clarine's shadow deepens beneath her. In the same instant, a shadow on the back of one of the camp tents darkens. A heartbeat later, they connect; the healing noble falls into her shadow and momentum tosses her uncerimoniously out onto the grass on the other side of camp.     The smile finally returns when she glances sidelong and up towards Hector's face, "Lilina is your daughter, I gather? It sounds like you care for her very much. If nothing else, I'm glad we were able to save you so you could see her again." > "Maybe you could teach her a thing or two? She's a real up-and-coming mage, she is"     "Mmm~..." Trudy closes her eyes, tapping her lips in thought, "The sort of magic I do seems quite different from what is widely known here. I'm not confident in my ability to teach runic sigils..." She glances Hector's way again, that playfulness returning to her face, "Oh, but if it is her wish and her father- the great hero Sir Hector-- asks, well, I most certainly should try, no?" > "I used to think of it that way. Just... evil. Bad. People who just want to spread pain and conquer. But it can't be just that, right?"     "Of course there's more to it than 'just being evil', boy," Grimnir chides Aidan in a good-natured tone, "King Zephiel's ideology is not built on a foundation of suffering in the first place. Ahh, but warring powers do tend to attract those with dark hearts and a desire to harm for all manner of reasons."     Gesturing with his staff, the old man indicates the squirrel directly, "Even you have had the odd dark thought, hmm? The strength of one's convictions to resist the depths of their damage is the deciding factor." His single eye wanders to the Dark Knight, already stomped off to sift through the ashes of a collapsed building, "No, this is the action of men who use King Zephiel's destructive ambitions as a cover to act out their own urges, I think."
Kale Hearthward	> At least he can't be stabbed here in the open. You want to bet on that, Aidan? > 'Search and rescue'... I wish there were more occasion for that than there has been." "... Oh, oh right because -" "Forgive me, Sir Roy. It's been a long week for me." He pauses. "Two weeks. Time's flown and I haven't had much time to rest. I've been trying to put one country back together, and prevent a war in another one." "What I mean to say is, you and yours have my swords. And hopefully we'll have more people to rescue soon. - I mean, you know what I mean." "They've no intent to occupy in a governmental capacity. Whatever Zephiel wants from Lycia, it's not to expand Bern. You can't do that if the farmers don't return to their fields." Kale rubs his face. "Yeah. I don't - I guess I don't get it." "I mean - the land is the thing, right? The land and the people. You claim the land, you make the people become yours and adopt your ideals. I thought that's how this works." "So what, exactly... is so much more important than the village, that they'd come through and... they..." Kale trails off, and clutches his forehead. "Sorry. Sorry - don't - mind me. Just a headache." It's not Petra that's giving him the 'headache', though her arrival leads to him moving a bit further away from the area she occupies. "Hey - can you, you know, turn that... off? Or at least... down?" he asks her. He ends up wandering over towards Flamel. Hearing music helps. Both with Petra's... thing, and with the other things troubling him. "You play pretty well."
Flamel Parsons	Petra's nearby! And not really interacting, per se, but meditating. And Flamel recognizes this for the simultaneously meaningless-yet-meaningful gesture that it is. He doesn't break stride in any way, nor glance too much or too little. He just continues playing when he can, and chatters when he can't. The only thing Petra respects more than being a shattered, broken human is being very Normal.     "Showing them what happened? It's definitely worth doing," Flamel explains to Aidan. "But it won't have an effect like you think. No internal rebellions, at least not in time for fixing things. It's a kind of help, but mostly *for them,* for the Bernish civilians who would have a chance to do a tiny shred of good. And, well, secure your own mask first, as they say." He shrugs, the strap of that guitar shifting awkwardly on his thin frame.     There's some discussion about Zephiel himself. "I really do wonder how he wound up the way he is. Are his younger years documented much? Does someone know what actually happened to shape him into the way he is today? If I can't dive into his mindscape, I can't find out the right way, but I want to at least find something to speculate on."     His singing has mostly stopped, but he still hums and strums those chords idly. Kale's compliment gets a bright, appreciative smile! "Thanks! Enough of my components had to learn it for the job, top-level Psychonauts have to pull double-duty as camp counselors." Looking at how he does it, one might come to a startling conclusion: An acoustic guitar is to a camp counselor what a cigarette is to a secret agent.
Dysnomia	She sighed, as the squirrel made his own statement, pupilless eyes turning to assess him with a disdainful tilt of her lip. "You do not burn a country to the ground for an artifact, especially when you know exactly where you can find it on the front lines." Her eyes swung to, and then away from, the princess. "And besides, they'd been making preparations for war on Lycia already. Narcian considered them already at war, Fire Emblem or not."     Her tone turns milder as she regards Markus, tugging at the now-tattering cloak she'd purchased from a vendor, what seemed like forever ago. "You're kinder to them than my old superiors would have been." Dysnomia decided on, when Marcus shared his own worries about extra mouths to feed. "They'd suggest they join as conscripts, or camp followers." Or else starve. It wasn't practical to feed them for nothing. But, for some reason, Mia couldn't bring herself to protest too hard.     Marcus spoke in wary half-statements, and Dysnomia felt some of the tension bleed from her shoulders. She closed her eyes. "...I see. I felt like I was going insane..." She trailed off. "War is a terrible thing. But you know, there are worse."     "...What Bern is doing here. It's horrible, isn't it?" She to assess the damage again. "There are always people like this, on both sides of war. The farmers. The tailors. The people just living their lives, day to day...War is far away from them. They don't make the decisions that make it happen. Many of them probably don't believe in it enough to fight for it. To die for it..."     "There are always people who don't believe in it. Sometimes, they're like your traitors, eager to turn coats when they think it benefits them. Sometimes, they're parents who aren't willing to fight and maybe leave their children orphaned. Sometimes, they might even believe making nice is really better for their people..."     "...There are always people like that, Marcus. There are some in Lycia. There are some in Bern. It's why, if we turn this war around, and we push into Bern's territory, I bet you won't burn down villages like they did. Why when we win, the people of Bern will still live. The alternative, that'd be monstrous..." She let her eyes drift to Marcus again, questioning. "...Wouldn't it?"
Odette Raskins	Odette's caught a little off guard by Dieck brandishing that food at her, and she even flinches slightly at first. Once she recognizes that he is in fact not an explosion or exotic animal, she lets out a relieved noise that quickly turns into a bashful giggle when she notices Lucius covering his mouth at the comment. "Oh! Um. D-do I? Th.. Thanks, Mister Dieck! Right." Judging from the focused stare on her face and that slightly open-mouth as she just takes in the scent and sight of the skewer, Dieck made the right call there. Odette's about to gobble the hell out of that skewer, too, but she stops herself at the last moment to take more controlled bites and nibbles of it instead (which helps a lot, considering how hot it is). It's not until she's about halfway through it, though, that she finally looks up and over at Dieck with a curious glint in her eyes. "Say.. Um. What kind of meat is this, anyway? It's real different from the stuff back home." Hearing Petra's somewhat awkward self-introduction has Odette pausing to look over at her, but not in a judgy way. Instead, she actually looks considerably more nervous than before, and why wouldn't she? She's heard about her accomplishments in Quicknest. She's heard about her kill count, her almost kill count, and now she's seeing from Petra a direct willingness to get involved with a war for seemingly no gain! Unless... It must be part of some kind of bigger plan. Still, with Petra presumably on the same side, Odette does eventually settle down, and she even chimes in with her own bit of vouching when (seemingly) prompted to do so. "O-oh! Um. Y-yes, Miss Petra's showed experience in.. Erm. Fighting and engi-" Wait. Do engines exist heer? "Fortifi... y-ing?" Lilian's appearance and coming nearby to join her in asking Lucius about his tome, too, has Odette straightening up just a bit more to look more vaguely professional with bits of venison still stuffed into her cheeks. She also realizes she might still be dressed oddly for the area in her distinctly non-regional EMT uniform with the fancy HUD glasses, and... Right. She never did actually buy any clothes that time. She got distracted talking to Alen and Lance. Probably should check on them later, too. "A tome... Oh! For magic stuff. I-I don't think I've.. I mean, I've heard of holy books before, but I don't think I've ever seen them used the same way they're used here." She replies while shifting around carefully and studying Lucius' diagrams. "Sounds like preparing mixes ahead of time, yeah... But if they're missing strokes..." She pauses, then snaps her fingers. "Oh! B-because they'll react.. Er. The spell'll happen once the last stroke is put in? That's just like some of these, mhm!" Nodding in both excitement and appreciation at Lucius' recognition, Odette opens said bag up to bring out a few fist-sized patches with little flame, blood drop, and skull stickers to help differentiate them. "It's hard to mix stuff together in the middle of a fight, so I have to spend a while preparing these back home, too. It'd be fine if it was just that I had to worry about, but then there's bone setting, blood loss, the rest of the tools..." She sighs dramatically, then peers at Lucius curiously while rubbing the side of her forearm. "Say... F-father Lucius? Can anyone use these... Er. Tomes or staffs if they know how to put these diagrams together?" She asks while looking from the tome to her bag, letting out another noise once she realizes that such a book might take up just as much space as the patches and bottles. "She was abandoned and grew up in the wilderness . . ." That, too, has Odette gawking at both Lilian and Petra from a distance. "I never knew..." She murmurs in quiet awe, actually looking and sounding impressed. "I thought that only happened in the stories, and... M-most of those people never even got smarter...!" No wonder Roy's got that look on his face. To Odette, it's no wonder he'd be impressed! She just doesn't hear what Hector says to him.
Desire Stars	Privately, it seems most likely to me that Etruria may be hoping Bern will tire itself out with its conquest of Lycia and then be vulnerable to counterattack. ... but we'll know more when we're back in Ostia. Lord Hector has observers in Etruria who can tell us of its internal affairs.     "It's hard for me to picture anyone waiting Bern out. Especially with how they keep finding new recruits..." She said that talking about mere politics is beneath a noble.     Neon makes a confused expression. Ace smiles like Roy had told a funny joke, even if he can see with his own eyes that it's true. Is that really your type?     "Aww," says Neon with warm adoration, who doesn't know Petra that well. "Good luck, Roy. I'll be rooting for you!" She excuses herself to go sit by the campfire and enjoy a venison skewer.     Ace, who knows Petra only slightly better, smirks. So what, exactly... is so much more important than the village, that they'd come through and... they...     "It's not that kind of war. Which is why we need to convince Etruria it can't be fought that way. Zephiel thinks that there's something fundamentally wrong with the world," answers Ace, arms crossed, frowning. "A question about the nature of people. If I had to guess based on what he told us and what we saw of Araphen, I'd say the war of extermination the dragons waged on the humans of this world long ago was meant to 'settle' it. He spoke about the outcome of that war like it was a court adjourning--about people mistaking that adjournment for the verdict."     "What he did with that village, and with castle Araphen, I think, was his way of trying to reach that verdict, or at least convene the court again. He doesn't care about holding land, about borders or about whatever relations have deteriorated between Bern and the other countries of this world."
Petra Soroka	Roy seems nice, Petra decides. He's right. It *is* cool that she's going to kill Aidan someday. She totters away to go loiter by Flamel, pressing a fingernail against one of the gauze wrappings around her bicep to try to dispel the itching underneath, completely oblivious to what Hector says behind her. "Of course I'll tell you as many times as you enjoy that I've never come across a 'but' I couldn't take;"     This makes sense to Petra. The idea of a 'but' too devastating for Lilian to overcome is terrifying, if alluring in an abstractly guilty way. Lilian's arrival makes her light up, beaming directionlessly despite the ruin and cold scent of smoke, and she gives a little wave even if Lilian isn't looking at her. "She was abandoned and grew up in the wilderness, so she struggles with behaving like a human from time to time."     "I-I didn't! I grew up normal!" In perfectly synchronized routine, Petra is immediately mortified by being described as a wild animal in front of people that she was intending to make a good impression on. Eyes wide to convey her insistence, Petra rocks her weight forwards and tilts her hip a fraction, interjecting to try to cut off the misrepresentation at the root, and making the mistake of replacing it with 'Petra'.     "I'm totally capable of acting like a person because I've got a lot of practice exactly *because* of that, and I only ever ended up abandoned in the wilderness by choice. How else do you sign up for a war effort?! It's not like I got fucking *drafted*, I'm here by choice!" "Maybe you have to be... a certain kind of strong person to look a cobbler or a scribe in the eye and tell them to be better, geopolitically-speaking."     Oddly, this is a question from Flamel that catches Petra's attention, despite her typical disinterest in politics. She gives it a bit of thought, brows furrowed and pouting in the way of being temporarily so inwardsly-focused that expression moderation ceases to be a concern of hers.     "Isn't it... true, though? I mean, like, the root of being able to command other people to go fight in a war is that people, collectively, believe you can do that. It's not like the soldiers are really internally different from the fucking, villagers or whatever they have; not just because that's where soldiers come from, but also because there's not any difference between the cultural momentum that gets a soldier to do what their general tells them to do, and the stuff that gets a peasant to believe that the king can tell the general to tell the soldiers to go burn down a village or something. Like, they totally *can* do those things, but it's still the general societal agreement of people that lets them."     Huh??? Is Petra's political meter swinging to the left in real-time? Has she finally managed to apply her ideological extremism for interpersonal relationships to a broader political spectrum? "I could totally blame the fuck out of any cobbler."
Petra Soroka	"It's just another way of saying Elite on Elite,"     Petra's glance finally slides towards Aidan, equipped with the sneer it so often is when looking in his direction. It seems like there's an extra layer to it this time, though, even more raw contempt than what there was when she was grinding him facefirst into the rubber ground atop Quicknest's castle. Her tone is absolutely withering, paired with what retort Lilian no doubt has for him too. "No. It isn't." "Hey - can you, you know, turn that... off? Or at least... down?"     Petra's attitude projected towards Kale, though she doesn't make a move to engage him while doing her meditative routine (incidentally, her aura's prickling is worse when she's introspecting that way), is actually moderately positive. His question dampens her expression for a moment, eliciting a rough 'Hahh?' out of her at first, before she clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes.     "Right, yeah. No, I can't, and I can't really do anything about it at all. It's just like that because I'm just like that. You can manage without it, Kale." She half-shrugs and then clears her slight frown away to a probingly-caring(?) expression, looking over at Kale's face. "How's it been, by the way? With all the... stuff you're working on." "Thanks! Enough of my components had to learn it for the job, top-level Psychonauts have to pull double-duty as camp counselors."     In shiftily-vague response to Kale and Flamel's exchange, Petra looks at neither of them and intently rolls a piece of charcoal wood beneath her boot before it crumbles into powder. "I, uh... 've been practicing guitar a bit too, actually. Buttercup got me one. 'S kind of nice. I used to play a... different instrument, so it's easy to pick it up quick."
Lilian Rook	'You said that and now you have me thinking. Maybe you have to be... a certain kind of strong person to look a cobbler or a scribe in the eye and tell them to be better, geopolitically-speaking.'     "I . . . don't know if it's about being strong." Lilian says. "But not blaming anyone is impossible. Things happen because of people. Whatever your circumstances, quietly saying nothing as your best friend joins the army is being responsible for something. It's only that if someone asked me to draw the precise cutoff between a Bernish street orphan and a wyvern rider, I think I'd simply hit them"     'Do you think Zephiel thinks that way, when he looks at us? I wonder...'     "I don't think Zephiel thinks much about us at all, Parsons." Lilian says. "Some of us stood out to him, but not for our responsibilities or our beliefs. Everyone in that room . . . he looked at like more of a bad memory than a person."     'Doesn't matter if they hate us or love us, if their soldiers still kill us.'     "That's an astonishingly worldly perspective for someone with such a humble affect~" Lilian says with a semifacetious smile to Dieck. Lacing her fingers behind her back for the short time they aren't occupied with food, she adds on "You're right, of course. The next time one of these bleeding hearts gets shot with an arrow, may they entertain the idea that the archer might have been tending cattle at the time if their parents were only less patriotic."     'Why, it's a tome. Otherworld mages don't use these, do they? But look. It's a magical diagram, missing just one or two strokes. Spells that would take minutes by hand take just a gesture or two with these. Of course, the human form is already a perfect diagram for itself...'     Lilian visibly lights up with the exponentially compounding vibrations of a niche academic who never finds anyone to talk to about their pet subject; even though she does, because it's all boring people at home, and honestly the way that mahou 'diagrams' are laid out internally is just so much more--     "My bag?" That takes her off guard for just a second, before her eyes light up. "Oh! I'd wondered if-- Well, some of us do! Books are a rather unwieldy item for me, but the principle is very familiar actually! Something that permanent and heavy . . . no, I suppose flipping through pages is about the most natural thing there is. And you'd need to in order to complete it during combat, goodness, now I'm wondering if . . ."     She is outright in the middle of fumbling for an especially nice healing ofuda to compare with one of her own complicated ogham runestones, but ends up having to leave both with Lucius for the moment, by which is meant she fumbles and drops both when she hears Rutger.
Lilian Rook	'Boyfriend or girlfriend?'     "--Huh?!"     Never before has Lilian sounded so deeply, earnestly, brattily offended-flustered over such a simple question in her life. She looks at Rutger with a blue-moon rare expression of maidenly panic on her face, eyes wide, face turning red, with hands suddenly pulled in closer to her body as she glances nervously around. "What does that have to do with anything?!" she whines, confused enough to have some vehemence in her own words. "I mean, even if I'm to assume you mean what I think, in reference to what I believe, then would it even--"     Lilian is stricken on the spot with the fast-dawning horror of realizing she has to flip a coin on whether Lucius is fully representative of the Church here, or whether Clarine is just a freak and non-representative of cultural consensus. Her pupils contract to pinpoints at the exact instant she realizes that someone else will just blurt it out anyways if she doesn't.     "Ah . . . No, I suppose that's . . ." Her eyes drift to Clarine with the cold dread of sizing up the gallows. "I-If you must know . . ." In adrenaline-soaked slow motion, she imagines lying just to keep her quiet, and reels at the inexplicable nausea she feels about answering Rutger that way; then she imagines telling the truth, and experiences the soul-killing chill of Lucius being less resilient than he seems. "A g-girlfriend, right . . . right now. But--"     The 'oh dear god' look on her face tells all there is to know about why she thought the full truth was a good idea and then suddenly realized that maybe it wasn't. Desperately searching, her eyes fall on Dieck-- dear, sweet, beautifully masculine Dieck, and Lilian doesn't dare look away from her implicative lifeline even as she finishes her death march of a sentence.     "--I-if you're planning, something, strategic, with this information, then you should know that I've been with men before." Lilian's deadliest mission yet reaches the evac zone with one brave, verbal lunge. "W-were you planning some sort of . . . i-infiltration?" All of this just to get Rutger some high durability combination clear nail gloss and hardener. For swordfighting. Like she uses.     'Oh, no. She was my swordfighting teacher when I lived in Ostia, before Etruria called her back'     "Well now I must meet her." Lilian stiffly about-faces and lurches for the safer topic. "It's just an amusing coincidence, but Cecilia is the name of the woman who taught me most of what I knew growing up. She practically raised me."     'But... thank you. I'd be embarrassed if I weren't doing my best. You know how that is, don't you?'     "I know well enough that 'embarrassed' is simplifying it a great deal." Lilian says, without having originally intended to do it so easily. "I wish I could say you still have plenty of time. Instead, I only have a strong feeling that you'll find out how gracefully lack any."
Blemishine	"I'm trying not to," he says, by which it's clear he means 'I'm trying to redefine 'too hard''.     Blemishine's beleaguered smile back to Roy can't be sympathetic, because it's empathetic instead. "...When you've got no option but to take up responsibility, you're the type to push yourself until you can't anymore, aren't you? You want to catch up."     Privately, it seems most likely to me that Etruria may be hoping Bern will tire itself out with its conquest of Lycia and then be vulnerable to counterattack. To gain its aid, we may have to demonstrate that this is after all a fight we could win.     "She might be right about that," the blonde mentions to Hector in a considerably lighter tone, in the same general vibe as 'let her cook'. A gloved hand thoughtfully comes up to her chin. "It's easy to come up with ideas like that, when they're still removed from the fighting."     "...And if that /does/ happen to be what they think, it'll have to be made clear that Bern won't be as weak for conquering Lycia as they think. That the best way to force them back would be on a united front. But I suppose it wouldn't do to jump to any conclusions until we get to Ostia."     And then the interaction with Petra Soroka happens.     Just as importantly, Roy's reaction to Petra Soroka happens, as does Hector's.     "Is that really your type?" "... What?"     After the fact, Blemishine conspiratorially leans into frame, conspicuously on Hector's half of it. "Deep breaths, Lord Roy. Deep breaths...! They're the best way to center yourself after after you've gone through a worldview-shattering experience!"     She pats him on the shoulder, and takes a brief detour not-quite-out of the conversation to give Lance, Alen, and Merlinus a hand. Much like the Seneschal, she too might still be keeping a nosy ear out.
Petra Soroka	"Does that exercise have a name?"     Petra is confronted with a beautiful priest(ess) taking interest in her personal little routine, though his voice is soft enough that she's not jolted out of her meditation. She opens her eyes slowly, the edges of weird skittish anxiety and uncertainty filed off her mental posture, and finishes the quiet cycle with-- unusually-- an inhale, with her lips slightly parted, rather than an exhale.     After that, Petra turns her attention to Lucius, wobbling her head side to side ambiguously. "It's, um... actually adapted from one that does, but that one doesn't really work for me anymore. For a few reasons. That's just a noumenological attunement exercise, so the idea's the same, I guess." In her current mood, Petra seems inclined to make an active effort to engage the Lycians, even though it's a subject she might shrug and deflect from ordinarily. She rubs a knuckle against the masonry she's leaning against, smearing traces of black ash on her finger while talking.     "Like, uh, there's sort of a tone here, right? This might not make much sense to you, since you're a local-- like, physically, and emotionally, not just physically-- but there's kind of a... pre-existing emotional shape to the stuff happening here. Like, in stories, having different structures of narratives that give you different expectations for how any particular, uh, event, or arc, might turn out? It's not really different in real life."     Petra casts her gaze around the burned town, the camp, the various clusters of Elites chattering with soldiers and nobility, taking it all in. "So there's just a vibe here, I mean. And I just got here, so I'm trying to internalize it."     That's the end of her explanation, and Petra just lets it hang in the air for a few beats. Hearing the words again in echoic memory, Petra takes a moment to bask in successfully wording something like that pretty well, developing a positive moodlet that will instantly be shattered if Lucius is confused or repulsed. A few seconds pass, and then she blinks, refocusing her gaze on Lucius. "Oh, and, uh, I'm Petra. By the way. What's your name?"
Petra Soroka	"--I-if you're planning, something, strategic, with this information, then you should know that I've been with men before."     Something shocking happening in Petra's peripheral view immediately snaps her full attention over towards Rutger. Lilian is currently flustered and off-balance! That kind of discomfort and stress, the fumbling signs of panic... there is some kind of *threat* being posed to Lilian! Probably by that pretty girl with the sword!     In Lilian's distress, she makes the fatal mistake of not interrupting Petra before she appears by her side to snap and growl at the source of it. As the resident authority on the subject, "*Hey*, you! Don't fucking plan anything *strategic* about Lilian's girlfriend. She'll fucking kick your ass, and I will too, and--" Petra abruptly loses the thread of what's going on. "... Men? Huh? Where? Why?"
Kale Hearthward	> "It's not that kind of war." Kale listens to the rest of the explanation. "Right... thank you. I know I'm joining this campaign fairly late..." > "How's it been, by the way? With all the... stuff you're working on." "Well..." There's a few moments of silence as Kale takes his potential topic list and pares it down a bit. Petra wouldn't care about Skyrah itself, he figures, though he has a lot to talk about there. "... Frustrating? Convincing people that I'm there to help. Keeping them from falling back into their old patterns. Keeping them from going off and looting stuff from unoccupied houses since we've only got a tenth of the people back so far. And that's all before actually-" Petra jumps up and runs off. "- getting to... actually fixing the - okay. I'll tell you later," he says to the space she previously occupied. Kale understands and doesn't realy mind. Petra's got some sort of... ... thing. With Lilian. Actually, no, he doesn't understand. Girls are weird.
Lilian Rook	'It's just another way of saying Elite on Elite'     "I can't quite help but notice that this would, implicitly, include you as well, Proudpick." says Lilian, now given the perfect opportunity to turn this flustered energy of hers towards something comfortingly hostile. "Truly your one and only talent is that you can always seem to find a way out of meaning anything you say and invent a cute little explanation for it afterwards."     The microaggression of tearing into her venison skewer in that exact conversational pause is probably accidental. Lilian is the type to not notice how slightly scary she is about meat, not flex it on purpose. "Let's see. Do I know analogies?" she says, around the motions of swallowing. She looks theatrically contemplative as she does, then leans closer. "The fact that you gave your word to never refer to yourself as a knight again, then chose to say 'well, you see, all Elites are like knights, so I'm use to knight business', is similar to someone who has been placed under house arrest screaming 'mother earth is my home' as he walks out into the street. Is that an analogy?"     "Surrounded by actual knights, too." Lilian all but growls, voice dropping half an octave in the process. "You can take back your egregiously careless wording, right now, or I can prostrate you in the middle of camp and have you beg for their forgiveness. I sincerely hope you choose correctly."     'I'm totally capable of acting like a person because I've got a lot of practice exactly *because* of that, and I only ever ended up abandoned in the wilderness by choice.'     Lilian, narratively, is required to look aside with a sort of weary-obliged 'I'm sure you see what I mean' at Roy, verging on sharing a secret. 'I could totally blame the fuck out of any cobbler' pushes it to the very eye of an eye roll.     'I mean - the land is the thing, right? The land and the people. You claim the land, you make the people become yours and adopt your ideals. I thought that's how this works.'     "Of course it is." Lilian says to Kale. "And when we first found these people, Zephiel was in the middle of dispatching his perceived top generals to track down Bern's own princess running away with an heirloom jewel." These two things are clearly related. "He's suddenly welcomed a valuable advisor into his life, who goes by the name of a mythical divinity and appears to be a powerful mage, begun summoning up things that look like ancient dragons via unknown sorcery, and is hunting for allegedly divine artifacts in the midst of his three-front war." Oh. "He's barely sparing time for pretense."
Odette Raskins	When Lilian geeks out over the topic of diagrams and magic, Odette finds her own perception of her changing yet again. She's already heard Lilian before during that more intense time when they had first met Lucius, but this is a whole new side of the Dame Commander that she's never seen before. The joy is infectious, and Odette can't help but gawk at the ofuda and runestone that are left behind, eyeing them from multiple angles even though she has little to no idea what she's looking at. "The style of the diagram is different, but if it does the same thing... Where do you think the last stroke needs to be made? And that rock... Uhh." That stumps her, and she looks back over at Lucius. "Do you ever use magic rocks like that, too?" "I-If you must know . . ." ". . . i-infiltration?" "... Men? Huh? Where? Why?" Petra isn't the only one that loses the thread. Odette's stare just lingers on the trio of Lilian, Petra, and Rutger as she tries to comprehend whatever it is that's gotten the former so... Irritated? Confused? For a moment, she almost thinks that Lilian's embarrassed about something, but that... Wait. Is that why Petra sounds so angry? But then Petra seems confused, too, so it can't be that. Maybe... "... Mister Dieck? D-do you still have more of that meat?" She asks, feigning ignorance while also being completely ignorant. She gestures at the trio with her head '''subtly''', but doesn't outright say Lilian's, Petra's, or Rutger's names.
Marigold	"Ha! Our Cecilia taught Lilina, too," says Hector, nearly slapping his knee. "But she reminds me more of you. Fresh-faced prodigy, chin-up way of being kindly, world on her shoulders, maybe the greatest at what she does."      Hector beams down at Trudy next: "Oh, and a fine daughter she is! Hate to imagine the look on her face if someone else had to tell her I'd died..." And then he claps her on the shoulder amiably, though it's almost enough to put the average person off-balance. "Ha, now I get to tell her I died myself!"      Then he straightens up and waves her off with his hand, though he's still grinning. "Pffff, some 'great hero' I am, curse and all. Maybe in my youth! But don't try and butter me up, Lady Trudy. I'll shoot for being a great father and Marquess these days."      Guinivere walks over to the fire and seats herself on a conveniently chair-height piece of rubble. "I really do wonder how he wound up the way he is," Flamel says. "Oh, Zephiel?" she says, mildly surprised. "Didn't I say?"      "Our father, King Desmond, favored me over him for the throne. I had no ambition, and was illegitimate besides... but because he despised Zephiel's mother, nothing Zephiel could do was good enough for Desmond. Of course, that only made Zephiel try harder for his approval, and then Desmond became insecure and jealous of Zephiel's drive, and..."      Guinivere takes a deep breath, hands clutching her dress's skirt, and then smiles apologetically. "So Desmond tried to kill Zephiel so I could inherit. Zephiel was poisoned; feigned his death, and lunged from the coffin to kill his father at his own funeral. He was... never quite the same, after that. Some courtiers have whispered the poison damaged his young mind. But it can't have been so simple. He was a good king for many years after."
Marigold	"Why'd you become a mercenary?"      Dieck, taking the second venison skewer for himself, shrugs amiably at Aidan while chewing and swallowing. "Used to fight in the arena," he says. "Then I was a bodyguard. Mercenary work's easier than the arena and takes less kowtowing than being a bodyguard. Why'd you become a knight, or whatever? Sounds hard." He pours some of the wine into his water canteen to dilute it, swishes it around, and tries a sip. Smiling shrug after.      Dieck winks back at Lilian with his scarred eye. "Thanks, Dame Commander. I knew you'd approve of the sophistication."      Lilian, terrifyingly, might become aware that the eyes of both Lucius (who she's flirted with) and Rutger (who she dropped her spaghetti after holding hands with) are on her from across the camp. If she says 'girlfriend', she'll get Lucius's suspicion. If she says 'boyfriend', then...?      Actually, why does Rutger care so much?      'Both'. Lucius, who has a great deal of confidence that Lilian saw him as a man, relaxes. But Rutger . . .      Lilian's eyes are on smiling Dieck when she answers. When she turns back to Rutger, she can just catch the trailing end of sparkling joy at 'girlfriend', dashed. They fade back into their usual demeanor, which suddenly seems crushingly empty-eyed now that one's seen that sparkle. "I see. Thank you for answering honestly," they say. 'Which one did you see me as?' is utterly beyond them to ask.      "I see," Clarine echoes greasonously, leaning in with triumphantly clenched fist. "Forbidden love in a noble house...! But doesn't that mean you're killing your bloodline?! Surely your parents disapproooo-auuughg?!"      She falls into her own shadow, pops out elsewhere, and is briefly visible sailing through the air above the wagon before landing in an indignant heap.      . . . A few moments later, when Rutger opens Lilian's gift and realizes what the nail gloss is, a little bit of the sparkle is restored.
Marigold	"I see," Lucius says to Petra, leaning back on his hand and eyes-shut beaming in an almost Phonyesque way. Her moodlet is allowed to stand: "Learning from the world, and trying to be mindful of others' perspectives. We consider those very high virtues, you know. But do different worlds really feel different? Perhaps I should travel, after all this."      His eyes open in gentle surprise; maybe he'd expected the interaction to stay completely anonymous. "Oh! It's a pleasure to meet you, Petra. I'm Father Lucius, a man of the cloth. Are you, also, some kind of sage?"      - - - -      Rutger is still focused too intently on the bottle of nail gloss to notice Petra's stomping approach until the last instant. Of course, an instant is enough.      Ksshhh. Left foot slides back, left hand clutches nail gloss protectively to chest, right thumb pushes their sword out of its scabbard a quarter-inch. Aggressive, loud person too close to their employer. Words parse on a delay after tone:      ". . . Huh?" And a second after that, their eyes drop a fraction of a degree from Petra's jugular to her collar. "It's not like that," they say, in a painfully androgynous and heartbreakingly disused voice.      "... Men? Huh? Where? Why?"      Rutger's lips press. It's surely coincidence that, at that instant, they sheathe their sword again. Tsss.      Marcus half-laughs at 'old superiors'. "Oh, I'm certain," he commiserates. What does he imagine he knows about who used to give Mia orders?      His expression starts to darken when he takes her literally. When he grasps that she's really talking about the slaughter of dragons, it darkens still further, until he's slumped back against that distant wall and rubbing his jaw uncomfortably.      "I see why you might be hesitant to believe in our cause, if you expect such a thing," he says slowly. Then he licks his lips, trying to prepare delicate words. "But of course... even if certain people wanted such a monstrous slaughter... it could never really be done, outside of stories."      His eyes lift to look up at her meaningfully over his brow. "Bernish people and Lycians don't look so different, after all. All they'd have to do is take off their armor and put down their weapons. And then even if we wanted to, we'd never know who they are to kill them."
Marigold	"Deep breaths?" Roy says to Blemishine, utterly perplexed. He tries a few before-- "Wait, my type?! No, I- Lady Blemishine! Lord Hector!!" "Now, now, boy. It's nothing to be--" "Auuuhhhhh..."      Roy crumples on the spot from the teasing. It's a deep and keening pain. He tries the deep breaths again, just in case.      Merlinus winks at Blemi on her way over, and hands her a nice cream-filled crisped pastry from his seat in the wagon. "Put that somewhere you think it goes," he encourages, with 'her mouth' implicitly being an option. Is it his home cooking? "My, for a brave knight, you sure know how to hit and run."      "Mmm," Dieck echoes Ace, with a nod. His wrist turns a new skewer with gentle patience. "You're pretty smart for your years. From everything Lady Guinivere's told me, it seems like Zephiel never even thinks about 'profit' or 'loss'. Just about 'victory' and 'defeat', whatever those mean. And why should he?"      Dieck gestures out at the torched fields with a free hand, and glances back at Kale. "We don't even know if it takes barley to feed a dragon. Maybe he makes 'em out of thin air. The old man's got a good head-" Dieck gestures at Grimnir- "but I wouldn't just assume Zephiel's shooting himself in the foot."      Then he lifts his new skewer and gestures fondly at Odette. "Venison," he says. "They don't have deer where you're from? All over the woods down here. Easier than fishin', when you've got a good archer."      Lucius, turning over the ofuda and runestone in his hands fondly, looks up at Odette and smiles. "Oh, anyone could. Just as anyone could become a musician. But mastering anima magic takes great study of the natural world; mastering light magic, as mine, takes enlightenment and cultivation of the self; and mastering dark magic takes sacrifice."      "Is that something you'd like to dedicate the time to? Lugh has great talent with anima, but it still took him three years." And then, back down to the rocks, he gently laughs and shakes his head. "No. The pages are expended, after all; imagine carving a rock for every spell! This is quite beyond me. The Otherworld is truly amazing."
Aidan Proudpick	"Even you have had the odd dark thought, hmm?" A puffed breath and puffed cheeks. "Too many hateful thoughts. Too much spite, aye." He considers THAT, wondering if it applies to Perry Talon? Maybe. But if he assumes, he'll just paint a picture of someone. He has to KNOW. He rolls the little bit of wine around. "Spite for people who didn't earn it. I want to try and learn more about people for that reason. Care about them. Control those urges." "Showing them what happened? It's definitely worth doing," That gives Aidan something to chew on. Is that something he can do? How. He has the time. But he doesn't have the resources. Will anyone listen to him? Will it hurt things if he tries? The sort of paralysis that made him freeze up at Quicknest. There has to be some way he can be who he wants to be, care about people. But also pull others in to stop fighting. He takes it all in, nodding along with the comments on Zephiel. "What about how he ruled before this? I've been thinking about this a lot. How someone changes, first they want something that maybe might even be normal to suddenly lashing out at the world." May they entertain the idea that the archer might have been tending cattle at the time if their parents were only less patriotic. Yea, I will, in fact. "And besides, they'd been making preparations for war on Lycia already. Narcian considered them already at war, Fire Emblem or not." A frown crosses Aidan's face, but he nods, a point well taken. "Then, aye, it's just about clearing out Lycia, I guess." "W-were you planning some sort of . . . i-infiltration?" 'God I wish men would plan to infiltrate me.' This thought is immediately followed by 'Disgusting. Loser.' Any urge that Aidan had to laugh is quickly thrown out the window. Which makes him all the more suspectible to the follow up. "You can take back your egregiously careless wording, right now." Pride and stand up against to Lilian. No, he can't sow division here. He looks Lilian in the eye, not flinching under the weight of her threat. Never again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disrespect the title 'Knight'. I was trying to make it easy to understand in the local words. I have respect and admiration for Roy's entire army and didn't mean to disrespect them or break my word." At which point he has to point a finger at Dieck, "Not a knight." He is glad for the distraction, though. "Independence for my Kingdom. Proving myself." He shrugs his shoulders, "Now?" A pause. "I need to keep my promises to others," no matter how much they despise him, "And to myself. And... because I just want to." He rolls his hand in a circle, trying to formulate the words. Then a faint grin finally to match Dieck's, "Everyone needs someone to care about them. I received more of it than I deserve, it's only fair that I pay it back out, right?"
Trudy Grimm	As Hector's meaty hand slams onto her shoulder and Trudy's entire body skews to one side from the impact, she suddenly realizes why she's fond of him. He reminds her of the better sorts of men who live in and around Hamarrheim. Huge, good-natured, loyal to family and friends. Were he not cursed, no doubt he would be just as savage a warrior too.     She rewards Hector's amiable nature with a sharp-toothed grin of her own, "Even if you had died, I'd be able to make sure you could say that to her yourself, you know. Spirits always linger when there's something they still want to do."     Trudy fixes her posture a bit when Hector removes his hand from her shoulder, then tilts forward at the hip just slightly, "You are still a great hero, you know. You're just..." Her leading hand hangs, then gestures by opening itself palm-up, "...Retired. So few warriors get that luxury. It's something to be proud of, no?"     "Anyway, I've made my decision," Flicking her hand, Trudy places it on the spine of her Grimoire once again, "If your daughter does wish to try learning some of my tricks, I'll do my best to impart... /some/thing or another." > "Too many hateful thoughts. Too much spite, aye. Spite for people who didn't earn it. I want to learn more about people for that reason. Care about them. Control those urges."     As he pulls out his pipe, Grimnir's single eye fixes on Aidan for a long, attentive moment. It lasts for several seconds after he's finished talking, even. The full duration of Grimnir tapping out ashes, then packing the pipe. He lets out a thoughtful sound as he lights it, puffing gently.     "Recognizing the problem is a step," he finally says, eye closing, "Learning the moderation. That's the challenge most face. A lot of men are far too weak-willed to bother, then act shocked when called out on it. Heh."     "It takes a strong heart to enter the Shining Halls, my boy. Not just a strong arm," His eye opens again, skimming over the ruin again, "So long as you're making the effort..." He puffs out a near-perfect ring of white smoke, rising out beyond the brim of his hat, "You'll make it there yet."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel listens intently. "You might have! But I never had it mentally organized..." He thinks about this history of Zephiel's. "And so we were working with the theory that Zephiel, maybe, had been influenced by that woman, the one with the psychic void. But..." He strums, and strums, and eventually stops it with a firm grip on the neck of the guitar. "I'm missing something. There's something *really* wrong with this, a piece of information I'm missing, and I can't... *quite* tell where it is. But I think I'm going to understand him, *really* understand him, if I can find it." He sets the guitar aside.     "I could totally blame the fuck out of any cobbler."     He finally gets back around to some things Petra's been saying. "You know, I'm gonna admit, I don't really understand why it feels true for me to say that... Maybe one of the things that causes problems for you is that you're too strong of a person. You don't bend or break or shatter the way other people do, under the circumstances they do." Pause. "I don't know why that felt true, it probably isn't. Anyway, I think that I would have a really hard time doing that! It would be *so* stressful and I couldn't keep it up. But I don't think that makes my way of doing things right, either. Maybe it's just a lot harder for me because of being a different type of person? I should think about this."     "What about how he ruled before this?"     "I get this..." Flamel adjusts his sunglasses and makes a few unsteady gestures with his hands. "This impression that he was pretty good as far as kings go. We're working on some theories that the woman with the psychic void effect might have gotten to him somehow, but all we know for sure is that something changed and that she showed up sometime around when all this started..."     "I, uh... 've been practicing guitar a bit too, actually."     "No kidding? It's really calming! And it's such a nice social fidget, really fills the air and helps people not be alone with their thoughts without making them have to jump into tough conversations."     "--I-if you're planning, something, strategic, with this information, then you should know that I've been with men before."     As for the questions of relationships and perceptions, Flamel watches keenly. He tries to contemplate it, setting much mental machinery to the task of isolating and testing this complicated idea. It's placed in elaborate containment cells, and subjected to extensive science, poking and prodding and scanning the mental image of Rutger and Lucius at great length. Imagine a secret conspiracy facility with unlimited black-budget slush-funding, working incredibly hard every day to study an anomaly, and producing the absolute worst outcome imaginable, a combination of deeply absent understanding with deeply overdone examination. It's almost but not entirely identical to the socio-psychic outcome that rips its way out of the mental containment chamber and kills a dozen clerks before running off.     Anyway, what Flamel says is: "You know, when I was looking for alt-Lilians ages ago, one of the closest cases I could find was lovingly married to a non-binary hero-armorer!" Cool, dude. Thanks. He smiles SO wide.
Dysnomia	The girl shared a dark chuckle with the old soldier, wishing she could share a drink with him. "I suppose there are commanding officers like that everywhere, aren't there...?"     There was so much she wanted to say, so much she wanted to ask--but, this, this was the wrong time, and the wrong place."So I see..." She let her hand rest against the wall, finger tapping thoughtfully at its side. "Come to think of it, you could be right. Even if their kingdom fell, whoever didn't want to be found could vanish. Maybe I've been worrying too much, after all..."     It wasn't quite a smile, what she showed Hector. But her relief was palpable. Everywhere she'd turned, everyone she'd spoken to...There was more of this same old story,and more people who uncritically swallowed it down. The people of of this world...Even the elites who'd visited--none of them seemed shaken. None of them asked questions. They swallowed the story, accepted it as fact and regurgitated it. Even hidden behind code and coy misdirection, it made her feel just a bit less like she'd gone insane.     Dysnomia crossed her arms, at least leaning beside Marcus against the wall. "I don't know just what you think we'll run into, but, he seems like a decent enough commander. When the time comes, I'll try to be there to share my take. And, Marcus..."     "You grew up in a world like this, you saw through me, and you decided to trust me." She visibly debated with herself for a long moment, before, finally, reaching a hand to the old soldier. "Can't say I don't appreciate it."
Odette Raskins	"They don't have deer where you're from?" The blank stare on Odette's face probably says a lot more to Dieck than anything she could actually say, but say things she does! "You mean... With the antlers?" She splays her fingers out and holds them above her head at an angle, holding them that way for a moment before shaking her head. "O-only in pictures. I never thought they'd be something you could just find anywhere, though. I thought they'd only show up on cold pla-aaains?" Good save. "Some courtiers have whispered the poison damaged his young mind. But it can't have been so simple. He was a good king for many years after." "It's possible, but unless he was getting dosed with that kind of stuff for a long time..." Odette starts to reply to Guinevere, then goes into an inquisitive tone and scrunches her face up after a while. "I-it sounds unlikely. I haven't heard a lot about sudden changes taking that long to kick in without... Um. Without steady small doses over a long time, or some kind of big shock to set it all off at once." She doesn't say anything about whispers in the ear, but she's totally thinking about it. Her thought process is interrupted during that moment of almost-a-fight between Rutger and Petra, though, and her hands tense up right in front of her chest as she freezes up on the spot. Thankfully, nobody actually gets cut or shot or beat, but it takes Odette half a minute or so just to collect herself enough to turn back to Lucius, the ofuda, and the runestone in his hands. "Oh, anyone could. Just as anyone could become a musician." "Really? Oh, I thought it'd need... Th-that's really good to hear, then. I thought it'd need some kind of... " Odette raises her hands briefly, pantomiming a little burst with her fingers. "Magic...? To get started. I don't really... I-I mean, stuff like this doesn't really exist back home, you know? But if it's doable with hard work, then..." An inhale, then a firm nod. "I-I'll do it. Even if it takes a long time, I... I won't know unless I try, right?" She laughs with a bit of a nervous chuckle, then quickly straightens herself up once she realizes she's forgotten one more important thing. "I-if that's okay with you, Lucius! I-I mean. Um. Father Lucius."
Desire Stars	You're pretty smart for your years. Ace smiles. From everything Lady Guinivere's told me, it seems like Zephiel never even thinks about 'profit' or 'loss'. Just about 'victory' and 'defeat', whatever those mean. And why should he?     A nod, and a thoughtful frown of contemplation from Ace. "It'd make sense. What's the latest word on the size of his army?"     "'Large and growing' was the last I heard." He shrugs. "No matter how he's managing it, 'wait and see' doesn't work well for putting out fires. Hopefully, we can convince Etruria to see it that way."     "Maybe I'll stand in for one of our nobles," he idly muses, watching Dieck work the skewer. "I've got the bearing," Ace smirks. "And the inclination. You see... as a star," he continues, "Everything under the sky is beneath me. But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally pass close-by to Earth." There's (probably) not even anyone here to irritate with self-assured smugness and he still does it.
Lilian Rook	'Ha! Our Cecilia taught Lilina, too'     "My. Things certainly do have a way of transpiring in patterns, don't they?" Lilian replies to Hector, in that sincerely amused but faintly dazed way of finding something interesting, but not being in the right cohort to find it that interesting.     'But she reminds me more of you. Fresh-faced prodigy, chin-up way of being kindly, world on her shoulders, maybe the greatest at what she does.'     Lilian opens her mouth to say something old-man-humouring, and draws up a blank well. Lips parted, she looks over to Hector, then down to his chin, then away again, and closes her mouth into the shape of a small guilty-hopeful smile. "I can't imagine what I've done to earn such a glowing estimation from you, Lord Hector." she says. Not knowing where else to go, she simply allows herself to dovetail into "I'm looking forward to seeing you home to your daughter too. And to telling her myself just how embarrassingly proud you are." She even knows that she's proving at least one thing he said right, by subtly changing the subject, but it's what she would do if he hadn't said so, and oddly, today, Lilian doesn't feel like being contrarian.     'Thanks, Dame Commander. I knew you'd approve of the sophistication.'     "When it comes to being who they choose to, despite what contradictions seem apparent to a layman, men of your calibre are hard to come by indeed~" Lilian shoots back with breezy coyness. "I'm either blessed or very fortunate to have these opportunities to verify that they still exist."     One chronological sequence later and Lilian is letting her attention drift away from Hector and Roy again, and casually encountering Rutger's gaze with the gently reassuring contact of a car smashing into a brick wall. Seeing that yawning cessation of a feeling that was there when she wasn't looking, sensed only by the contours of its vacuum, nameless and indistinct, yet inducing gut-dropping anxiety, puts a very exact number of Lilian's personal feelings in front and demarcates them as gruesome crumple zones.     She looks at Rutger like a kitten she just accidentally kicked and that has already run off under the sofa so that she can't pick it up and pet it and clumsily attempt to convey to it that she means it no harm, left confused and uselessly fretting over such a gulf in comprehension that she can only work her jaw in silence under the building despair of ever explaining it.     'I see'     "Oh dear god . . ." Lilian guttural-whispers.
Lilian Rook	'"Forbidden love in a noble house...! But doesn't that mean you're killing your bloodline?! Surely your parents disapproooo-'     That answers at least half of Lilian's private ambiguity about this country's standards, and confuses her so much as to why Clarine had treated her like a creeper at first only to become suddenly fascinated that the option to remain silent is instantaneously greyed out on Lilian's menu. "I swear-- This is exactly why I don't like talking about it!" Lilian squeals in petty anger, possibly being the only Elite remaining in the Sector still capable of being this way. "Obviously they don't approve! You don't have to remind me! And I don't care about the bloodline! I need her! Why can't you leave-- God!!!"     Lilian only stops taking super effective damage from a secret, unidentified damage type when the bratty fairy tale noble smugging at her about her Forbidden Love amidst assorted knigts and castle-owners is physically yeeted away. Clarine being dumped in a comedic pile doesn't actually stop her from hearing Lilian, but it does make her feel a little better. Well enough to take a deep breath, hold it, until her face is a little less pink and her eyes are a little less indignantly dewy, and graveyard stumble through the smoking remains of realizing that she still doesn't know why Rutger asked.     'I see. Thank you for answering honestly'     "I-I'm sorry. I don't . . . quite understand, the purpose of . . ." As the walking dead, her only tool is blisteringly vulnerable telling-the-truth. "If this is about . . . back at Thria, then . . ." Even if it sometimes works, every once in a while, Lilian still has the dazed look and sound about her of being caught in a tragic scandal she doesn't quite fully understand, and still entertains delusions of somehow fixing.     "You flinched. When I reached out for your hand. So I thought that you must have your reasons to worry about . . . people acting familiar towards you. And then, in my ignorance, I thought to put that sort of worry to rest. So that we could work together. But I hesitated at the last moment. Because . . ." Wringing her hands together and looking down like this is something Lilian normally passes up in favour of savage emotional violence, and yet, right now, she can't even figure out where she'd direct it if she could even summon it up. She looks as if she could combust.     ". . . I suddenly worried that . . . if you knew about . . . her. Then you might've . . . felt that perhaps I was someone not to trust. I was afraid that by saying it, I might make my motives seem . . . less than . . . S-so I . . . A-apologize, now. For causing you this much difficulty."     Lilian, hopelessly caught up in her tangled mire of ambiguously dangerous mental narrative, utterly and completely fails to examine how this sentiment makes literally any sense applied to this situation, in an act of heroine-grade dipshit behaviour she will no doubt suddenly remember six months from now and cringe herself inside out from. "A-and I apologize for making it such an embarrassment for you. Right now. Please rest assured that my interest in you is as a fellow swordsman and ally of Lycia, despite our current arrangement." She means every single word of this with heartaching sincerity, and says it all to the person she keeps buying shampoo and conditioner. As a swordsman.
Lilian Rook	'You know, when I was looking for alt-Lilians ages ago, one of the closest cases I could find was lovingly married to a non-binary hero-armorer!'     "What the fffuck are you talking about Parsons?! What even is-- what does that mean--" Now she's right back to reeling. "Oh my god you'd better not act this way when we get to Ostia!" Lilian huffs. "Speaking of which--"     She turns to Guinivere, important business about Etruria's potential motives on her lips, and then she goes horridly pale in realization, and all of her complicated political thoughts drain away. "I'll. Write down some thoughts." Lilian croaks.
Petra Soroka	"He was a good king for many years after."     Oh thank god, a conveniently-within-earshot explanation of the backstory of the guy everyone's supposed to be fighting. Petra absorbs this dutifully, even though it's not directed towards her, because it's important to get some idea of Zephiel's personality as the figurehead for antagonism even on this scale. To demonstrate her active listening, Petra shares a thought of her own in response.     "I guess props to him for killing his shitty dad, though. Er--" Not having been explicitly told so, Petra belatedly puts together an obvious fact after the words have already left her mouth. "Killing your shitty dad. Uh. Sorry." "Maybe one of the things that causes problems for you is that you're too strong of a person. You don't bend or break or shatter the way other people do, under the circumstances they do."     Petra is completely taken off guard by Flamel, temporarily stunned. She silently rotates and tears apart the idea in her mind, posture bunched up in a physical expression of the shock caused by the suggestion, until eventually cautiously agreeing with his retraction.     "I... yeah, don't... think so? I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not a strong *enough* person. If I don't shatter like normal people that's just because I, you know, have the... perspective, I guess, to fuck with how it happens on purpose. Like, obviously it's stressful to me to go super hard at every fucking piemaker peasant in the world at once, but that's a... intentional kind." "I'm Father Lucius, a man of the cloth."     A three-hit combo of gender nonconformity from the beautiful priest with long blonde hair strikes Petra in sequence, leaving her reeling. Obviously, the way Lucius looks is in sharp contrast with the masculinity of their name, but-- Petra has a secret weapon. For months and months, she's been a resident of the City, and even just recently with hiring Vincent, she's highly desensitized to women with mens' names. She won't guess wrong again and embarrass herself like she did with Vincent, because she's got *practice*, so she's *normal* now.     She still sounds unsteady, cold-sweat. A sense of formless doom overtakes her. "I-I-- you know, um, I h-have a coworker like that too. She uses a guy's name, even though-- yeah. S-so, you know, I'm... won't have any problems, or confusion, or whatever, from m-me. Nice to meet you, Lucius." "Are you, also, some kind of sage?"     Assuming her time on earth isn't abruptly cut short, Petra considers this line of his in the context of everything she knows about the priest. He used the same title as Berislav, so clearly he's a religious type, but he also chattered with Lilian about magic diagrams, so he could mean that in the sense of a magic user too. When it comes down to it, though, Petra is neither Christian nor a magic user, so the answer's the same.     "No," she says, "I'm just a girl."
Petra Soroka	The former topic is given much more attention, since it focuses on one of Petra's favored topics-- socionarrative structures and the tautological coherence of action-outcome paradigms with the general strokes of cultural expectations-- and avoids one of her least favorite topics-- impending death by Woke. "Worlds do feel kind of different. But that's obvious if you think about it, right? There's sort of a feedback loop between 'the way the world is' and 'the way people think the world is', so different worlds with different expectations end up sorting themselves apart like that. You know, there's plenty of worlds where, like, this burned down village would barely be notable, because of how often it happens. Everyone is just used to it, and it's expected that if a village gets attacked, it'll end up destroyed, and because it's the expectation, it's also what whoever's doing that village-attacking ends up doing. But then, like, on the other hand, there's worlds where killing even a single person like this would be super horrifying. You know, when I--"     Petra's rambling hitches as she barely catches herself before her next line. Is it okay to talk about being a supervillain here? It would be awkward *hiding* it, but it's still pretty intense to bring up on a first meeting, isn't it? In the end, though, she follows through, but only in the most pathetic way possible.     Petra pokes the tips of her fingers together embarrassedly, mumbling and looking away from Lucius. "... When *I* conquered a country, not a single person ended up getting killed at all. It's that sort of thing. It makes a lot more sense once you've been around traveling, I think. I grew up post-unification, so I can barely imagine being stuck in a single world." "It's not like that,"     Petra's pounding heart rate from Rutger's flash of motion towards her takes minutes to settle down even once they sheathe their sword. She shifted onto her back foot, compact mirror nestled in her palm, but far, far slower, and she knows it. The threat diffuses, though, and Petra gives no serious thought to the pretty sword girl's rustily androgynous voice, especially since Lilian seems to like her, and...? "And I don't care about the bloodline! I need her!"     The way Petra claps her hands to her mouth and stares at Lilian with her eyes practically sparkling makes Lilian feel like she's been caught doing something unspeakably filthy by the one person who could make it worse by agreeing rather than being repulsed. "You know, when I was looking for alt-Lilians ages ago, one of the closest cases I could find was lovingly married to a non-binary hero-armorer!"     Clearly there's no way Flamel is referring to Rutger here-- and Lilian isn't even a consideration-- but the comment is still projected in the trio's direction. Jolting like she's been shot, Petra whips her head towards Flamel, eyes wide, and blurts out defensively, "I'm *not* non-binary!"
Blemishine	Roy crumples on the spot from the teasing. It's a deep and keening pain. He tries the deep breaths again, just in case.     Blemi has a skip in her step and one of those satisfied 'hm-hm-hm~'s leaking out as she makes it over towards the Seneschal and friends, seeming pleasantly surprised by the offer at first before accepting it warmly with a smile. "Thank you, Mister Merlinus! I think I know the /exact/ place for it..."     When she next speaks, it's after a hearty swallow, with a hint of cream left behind on the corner of her lips - and also a giggle. "I can be a preeeeetty untraditional knight sometimes, y'know~! Lord Roy'll be all the stronger for it, promise. And a little bit of fluster once in a while helps lighten one's load!" Another small bite follows, with an approving nod of the taste as she takes her time with it.     Settling against the caravan for a moment, her focus drifts back in Roy's direction, voice lowering thoughtfully. "He really is trying his hardest with what he has, isn't he? When his father first sent him to take his place at the meeting of lords, I can't imagine he thought he'd be heading this entire group here, Lycia's best hope for dealing with Bern. Or going after divine weapons... or teaming up with outsiders like us."     "And not once so far do I remember him ever seriously complaining about any of it. Instead, he's constantly pushing himself, trying to take on all the challenges he knows he's not ready for, yet has no choice but to be. Everyone else around him is giving their all and he's at the helm, so even if he feels like he has no talent for it - or maybe /because/ he feels like that - he has to work more and put in more effort than anyone else."     "I'd say that I wish he didn't feel like he has to strain himself so much... but I think in the end, the things he'll learn attempting it will make him that much stronger for it. I can't picture him as the type who'll regret it, either."     Blemishine goes for another bite, just to pause right before taking it to pull back and close her eyes, giving an embarrassed chuckle towards Merlinus. "A-Ahaha, listen to me, rambling on and on about this sort of thing when he's not even in earshot! That's not very knightly of me either, is it? Though I was always a better craftsman than anything, myself."     She waves the treat back and forth in her hand. "And speaking of, did you make this yourself, Mister Merlinus? It's delicious!"
Lilian Rook	'I-I-- you know, um, I h-have a coworker like that too. She uses a guy's name, even though-- yeah. S-so, you know, I'm... won't have any problems, or confusion, or whatever, from m-me. Nice to meet you, Lucius.'     "I know I've already explained this, but, once again, allow me to apologize on her behalf. As someone who was raised in the wilderness like an animal, even after being rehabilitated, she still struggles with human communication." Lilian says. "She especially struggles with identifying people, grasping intangible qualities, and discerning the appropriate times to say things."     It comes out so clinically that one could easily believe that she intends to simply belittle Petra with a sequence of mid-grade putdowns. Her cadence doesn't let up a single bit all the way through "As a result, sometimes she's far too stupid to comprehend obvious things."     It's too late for Petra to course correct when Lilian reveals the rest of her intent too. The the coalescing motion and sound of magical black particulate is concealed in the lead-up, but the sudden, biting squeeze of smooth-textured metallic cord around Petra's throat is not quite so subtle. Much like Hibiki taking a run at Clark, save Lilian got one of Petra's hands in the same twist, instead of violently strangling her on the spot.
Petra Soroka	"Wahh--! What did I doooooo??--"     Petra's frantic yelp of surprise is cut off with a hoarse rasp when Lilian's leash tightens around her hand and throat. She squirms around distressedly, but doesn't try to struggle or escaepe, instead protesting with a strangled whine.     "B-but I tried.... I thought I did it...." Petra's whimpers fade away and pink blooms in her face, rapidly becoming far more cognizant of being held on a leash in front of a shockingly large crowd than she has the awareness or wherewithal to try to defend herself. Blushing deeply and squirming in place, Petra gradually falls silent and just ends up staring at the ground with her lips pressed together.
Marigold	"Don't give me too much credit for trusting you. You've made it easy. And I've had help learning how to," Marcus says, with a self-conscious fondness. "... Naturally, I'm not telling anyone. But I know Hector and Lucius at the least could keep your trust. They were there."      'Thirty years ago', he must mean. When whatever happened, happened.      He takes a deep breath, shoulders rising and falling with a clank of his armor, and then smiles in that knowing way older men do. With a raised voice: "Well. I'm hungry, I don't know about you. Let's see about those skewers, alright? If Dieck doesn't have any for us by now I'll have his ear."      Guinivere adds to Aidan's wondering about the Fire Emblem: "With what I've heard of your meeting with my brother, Narcian seemed only somewhat concerned with the Emblem. If Zephiel could use it to get the Binding Blade, it would surely strengthen him; yet his ambitions must be reachable even without it."      And to Ace, wincing: "Nowhere have I heard of him taking heavy losses. It's a benefit of, everywhere, sowing division and letting traitors do his work. And also likely of his new friends."      Dieck side-eyes him, naturally the kind of guy to be charmed by swagger. "That's some braggadocio you've got there," the mercenary says, with a warmly lackadaisical air. "You'd fill seats at the arena. Etruria likes that kind of stuff, as long as you keep it classy. But between you and me-"      Tap, tap, with a used skewer on the shoulder. Chiding. "You're a lot easier to look at than the sun."      Aidan explains his ambitions. "Mmmm," says Dieck, while chewing the meat off a stick. "That's a good goal. But be careful. 'I've been cared for more than I deserve'... that's something that people who haven't been cared for say, too. You on good terms with your family?"      Then he looks at Odette, and for a second he seems to glow with a transcendent joy. He puts his one free hand up behind his head and splays the fingers. "Yeah," Dieck says, immeasurably fond. "Exactly with the antlers."
Marigold	The idea of bringing him back as a ghost enormously entertains Hector. "Ha! Oh, that'd go over well! 'Dear little Lilina- yes, yes, please stop screaming...' well, maybe I'd frighten her to death, and then we'd be a big ghost family. Wouldn't that be a thing."      His smile remains even when his shoulders shift uncomfortably. "Pah. 'Retired hero' sounds nice, sure. It'd sound nicer if the job were done. The Eight Legends didn't retire untl the Scouring was finished; you don't hear about any of them being quitters!" He breathes out and shakes his head.      "Thank you, Trudy. You're trying to make me feel better. But I should be past the age where the most important thing's gallivanting around and swinging my axe." Unspoken in that 'should' is the fact that, childishly, he does feel like he should still be doing it.      "Oh, really?" Lucius seems pleasantly shocked that Odette wants to try. "Well, I presume you won't mind being taught light magic? It's the most familiar to me, and it has the greatest connection to healing." He sets his book aside and weights it open with the runestone so the page will properly dry.      "At the core, it's only drawing the lines with your hand that are missing from the book's diagram to 'complete the circuit', as it were. But the power must still come from within you, Odette. We'll have to start with a regular routine of meditation to build the foundation. That's even more important than theory. Here, take this copy of Elimine's Stepping-Stones-" a thin leather-bound book- "and I'll walk you through the basics, if you have time?"
Marigold	Merlinus taps the side of his nose in a way that'd be called 'impish' if it were done by anyone other than a fiftysomething-year-old man. "Ah, I'm flattered you think it could be mine! Actually, half of my family are bakers. If I take those far and wide, why, I'm just building a customer base!"      "As for Roy... I'm afraid it's his greatest flaw. Whatever comes to him, he assumes it's his duty to bear. Sometimes you ought to be looking for the easy way out. But, haha, that's what all these fine nobles have me for." Merlinus winks at the shining knight before him and leans in.      "You wouldn't know anyone else with that flaw, would you? Taking on another world's troubles, even as a humble craftsman..." He's ruthless. "Well, stop by here for a pastry and a break often enough, and you'll find the balance."      Rutger stares at Lilian for a long, long moment. It becomes abundantly clear that the shoujo sparkles in their eyes don't make their gaze any less piercing or their expression any less blank.      Finally-- ". . . I understand, Dame Commander."-- they bow deeply from the waist. When they straighten back up, that might be a slight smile. "You've been very kind to me. And I've put you in a hard position. Please forgive me. I . . . I'm not sure I can explain why I wanted to know. But I don't suspect your motives. I'll keep being grateful for your gifts. They mean a lot, to me."      That might be the most they've ever said at once. Rutger thinks to do something further, but then hesitates. It isn't until Lilian's halfway turned to go that they find the courage to approach and hug her from the side. "Thank you."      After they pull away, Rutger regards Flamel as if he might perhaps have a very exotic and concerning disease. Is that a word that even translates properly?      Petra pulls Lucius's attention away from the medic for a moment. He looks up, already habitually warm.      "I-I-- you know, um, I h-have a coworker like that too."      Lucius smiles, patiently gratified.      "She uses a guy's name, even though-- yeah."      The hammerblow. His lips part. Eyes defocus, trying to figure out how that makes any sense.      "S-so, you know, I'm... won't have any problems, or confusion, or whatever"      It sinks in. His jaw trembles a little, with something that's a world away from being a laugh. "Petra, I..." The poor man coughs. He swallows, with difficulty, and then balls his hand up over his chest in apparent pain. "I, don't know what's made you believe otherwise, but I've been quite clear..."      Is it heartburn or something? He looks physically agonized. His eyes are dry, but his lower eyelids are tensed like he's ready to hold in tears. He looks to Lilian through a curtain of hair with a strange cast of his lips, but--      "Shut the FUCK up!" In the middle of Lilian very seriously taking Petra's hands, Petra is impacted in the back by about ninety pounds of boy. Chad tries for the flying kick and just sort of ends up tackling her instead, and then tries to wrestle her to the ground, which is entirely contingent on Lilian letting go of her. "Chad--?!" "Chad!!" "Don't talk about my dad like that! I'll kill you!!" "It was just a mistake..."
Flamel Parsons	The gang are descending into fights. Flamel Parsons doesn't really understand what's going on or why, but he picks up his guitar again and starts projecting, as hard as possible, a generalized psychic field of violence-reduction, even if the violence is justified. He also uses his psychic powers to do that, not just the strumming of the guitar, because he has no actual music-based powers and cannot project emotional influence.     While insolent young folks wrestle, Flamel strums happily from a seat nearby. He's swapped to a song about some kind of murderous werewolf theater-fighter or something? The music might actually be counteracting the calming effect. possibly, but he keeps strumming away right next to the presumed dust-cloud violence of bad posting and teenage rage.
Dysnomia	"Hector?" Dysnomia repeats, taken aback, her eyes swinging back toward where the Lycian League's head was standing. "I thought..." She trailed off, a little lost, leaving what exactly she'd thought the man had done unsaid. She chewed on her lip, unsure where else to rest this bead of wrath she'd been nursing in her chest these past few weeks. "...We'll see, I guess." She muttered, sullen, gaze averted.     "He'd better have," Mia grumbled, eager to find something to grouse about to avoid risking being any more earnest that she already had been. "You! Dieck! We need some..."     The words died in her throat as, suddenly aware of what else was going on, she found herself standing in front of a furious adolescent tussle. Then, to Marcus, "What under the stars did we miss?"
Odette Raskins	"D... Do you mind if I bring some books from home next time? To see if.. You know. If there's any other animals in those you have around here." ODette's eyes light up in tune with Dieck's, apparently keen on finally finding a new meat friend among so many epople here. That light continues to shine as she actually gets the affirmative from Lucius, too. Of course she'd be excited to learn magic like in her stories! She's not entirely certain what the differences between light and anima magic are, but... Heck, it's Lucius that'll be teaching her. "O-of course! I mean, if I can learn something like light magic, I could save so many people and so much space..." Plus, it'll make her a little bit more like those magical girls in all those shows she's watched, and the two she knows in real life. Odette takes the book he offers gingerly, almost like the book itself might as well be a sacred object to her. "Sure thing. I-I won't let you down, Father!" It'll be easier said than done, of course, considering what Lucius had said about the need to meditate As she's distracted by actually opening up the book and just marveling at the craftsmanship of it, though, she doesn't quite catch what's going on at first. By the time Odette looks back up, there's a sudden whirlwind of activity between the choking, the shouting, the visible chest pain, the leaping tackle that may or may not have started as some kind of kick, and werewolf murder music. One step at a time. Lucius needs checking on to see if he's suddenly gotten sick, and then she can worry about treating Chad and Petra after their scuffle.
Desire Stars	Nowhere have I heard of him taking heavy losses. It's a benefit of, everywhere, sowing division and letting traitors do his work. And also likely of his new friends. "Then convincing Etruria to help is going to be a delicate balancing act. Not great... but not impossible." Etruria likes that kind of stuff, as long as you keep it classy. But between you and me-You're a lot easier to look at than the sun.     "Sounds like you like it too."     The unexpected last part, particularly punctuated by the jab from the skewer, draws the same kind of smile he'd given Guinivere. He takes the skewer between his thumb and forefinger, gently tugging it, without pulling it out of the mercenary's hand. "I'm also a lot closer, no?"     "That could be dangerous for you, Dieck. Get too close to the sun and you might get burned." He releases the skewer, and his brown eyes glimmer briefly, like a punctuation for his smile.     "Are you sure you can handle the heat?" Before Dieck can manage the answer, a quick sleight of hand snatches the spent skewer from him. Ace rolls it across his fingers, stands up, and ventures towards the edge of camp to do some thinking. "Thanks for the insight," he says, looking over his shoulder with a smug grin. "It helps to know I'll be in my element."
Blemishine	You wouldn't know anyone else with that flaw, would you? Taking on another world's troubles, even as a humble craftsman...     The lady knight makes an overexaggerated gesture of placing her pastry-holding hand against her chest, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as if to recite a prayer - with the effect utterly ruined by the wide smile on her face. "I know /absolutely nothing/ of which you speak, Mister Merlinus! Who would ever do such a thing? I can't imagine!"     One eye peeks back open. "...But I think this hypothetical humble craftsman would have to agree with you. And I also think she'd have some words about, say... trying to tackle every responsibility alone, when some should maybe be shared and shouldered with allies."     Blemishine holds the stare for a second, then giggles.     And plops the small remainder of the treat into her mouth, happily finishing it off before chuckling yet again. "Eheh. Asking Lord Roy to take it easier won't do a thing, don't I know it - but I think he'll find that balance himself down the road. From testing himself now and, yup, exactly because he has you! And everyone here, really."     "And since the way craftsmen best help others is by giving them the tools and support they need... I'll do my own part to help him get there! At the very least, I think I might have to start making a habit of asking him to join me on snack breaks just like this."