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Marigold	SOMEWHERE ELSE      A weird purple rainforest with unfamiliar trees.      Following the Warpgate evacuation after Galle's attack, Roy's army makes their way through a quick succession of other worlds to shake potential pursuit. There's a quick bumble through a high-tech shipping hub; a twenty-minute hurried walk through a forest that GPS may inform you is in Chamarajnagar, India; a near-stumble into a Warpgate that just leads to the middle of a familiar ocean; and finally after several more actinic-glowing rift 'connecting flights', a violet alien forest with a pretty orange sky.      Under any other circumstances, the Elibe natives would be awed. Instead, there's only taut urgency. The caravan is destroyed, but nobody's dead- at least, nobody who's stayed that way. The journey's taken in a crisp near-silence, with melancholy murmurs passed back and forth.      "I'm really sorry, Thea. I couldn't... there just wasn't any room to..."      "Don't be, Shanna. I'm glad you kept your head down. The airspace was..."      "I'll make it up to you somehow, Sophia. I know it's all you have of him."      "Oh, Cecilia... he would've wanted you to... for the sake of peace..."      "Father. Is something wrong? You need to take a break."      "Ah, Chad... I'll rest when the work is done. I'm alright."      Roy, after his treatment by Odette, is only just well enough to feverishly cling to Marcus's back on his horse at a gentle walk, unless someone else has better transportation.      "We... shouldn't have, ahh... been out in the open... I'm--"      "Lord Roy. I must discourage you from speaking, especially if it's to beat yourself up."      Finally, after a ways of avoiding suspiciously-turquoise ponds and carefully traipsing over scraggly roots, the group comes to a scouted-out clearing of high, hard, level ground, within walking distance of several other Warpgates- an obscure, natural hub. As good a place as any to rest. Madeleine and other volunteers are sent out to find the best way back to Etruria, but that will wait.
Marigold	Fae is jittery-anxious, but not so poorly-off that Igrene can't comfort her with a little treat and some behind-the-jaw dragonform scratches, which she does. Lugh takes the chance to hug her side like she's a big stuffed animal, too; Fae doesn't mind in the least.      Lucius and Clarine tend the wounded with their magic, including you; and especially including Roy, who's laid gently against the trunk of a tree. But there's only so much they can do for his terrible glowing wounds, reluctant to fully close: one through his chest and one through his back, both all the way through, and both narrowly missing his heart.      He looks listless, pale, and sweaty. He looks like he wants to cry, but won't. Cecilia crouches by his side and rests a hand on his shoulder; she briefly studies Forblaze with a troubled expression before turning back to comfort him. Lilina silently squeezes his hand, her young face prematurely creased with worry.      Merlinus rustles up some volunteers to go back to the warpgate near Missur's tip, where you'd taken the old sea fort from Bern. Some abandoned wagons are still there; he returns with a couple of Bernish make, slightly scuffed and rained-on, but piled with pilfered supplies.      Dieck and Echidna set about the boring task of rustling up firewood (even though both of them are pretty busted up)- it burns green, here, but smells nice- and starting up a stew. Someone who can suss out poison can help them forage; almost any weird little fruit or critter can be found in this alien wilderness, and most of it is edible.      To hear Merlinus recount it, glumly rifling through his new caravan: "We're down two draft horses- Saint forbid we need Sue's war-pony to pull our wagons. We've got 'enough' weapons, but most of the spares will be lower-quality now. Most of the fort's rations had gone bad, so we've only got a day or two of food and drink in reserve if foraging fails."      "Half our people are injured, and a quarter badly enough they shouldn't be fighting this week, even with magic. And if you ask me, Lord Roy shouldn't even be allowed to sit up. Anything you can do to fix any of those, I'd be grateful."      BGM: https://youtu.be/4cGYN-syu5w
Khosa	Khosa waves off any healing on her behalf, because it's better used on anyone else; as long as she's conscious, she can fix herself, and while it would *help* her she doesn't need it. Other people do. Which is why she's performing something slightly unpleasant when it's time to chat; she's peeling some of the heavier pieces of carapace off her arms, something that takes a bit of tugging and wiggling back and forth - she doesn't shed them as quickly or easily as she did snakeskin. It leaves fresh brown skin behind rather than something raw and bloody, but it is kind of disconcerting to watch - like someone taking off plate mail, except the armour is the outer layer of their body. She's also accumulating a collection of carapace plates, which has given her an idea - but for later. Khosa doesn't trust her ability to forage in a forest for food, so she's not helping with that, though she can test things for poison (though given her technique is to eat it and see how it feels it might not be the best plan; she claims to be able to purge any natural poison, but can't guarantee that's true anywhere but Athas). "I can get wagon-pullers," Khosa volunteers, "and they're sturdier than horses, but you might not like them as much. At home we use inix - big lizards. You wouldn't need as many as horses either, they're about twelve feet long and strong for their size. They're good on rocks and sand and rough terrain. Not sure how they'd handle the forest, but the horses don't do great either. Anyway, I can get one or two. Iron's so valuable at home, I'd just take one of the bad swords - we'd be able to swap it for one and get change. Might need more if you want a wagon with it. The hardest part would be getting it to the warpgate, the one in Tyr's under the city." "The rest..." Khosa looks from the downed Roy to Merlinus and back. "I've got fewer ideas," Khosa admits. "Sorry. This kinda drove home that I'm not really used to being military, not like this. I'll do anything I can but I'm not sure what would be best to do without knowing. What's the plan from here out? How long do you need to recover? A week, two?" By 'you' she means Roy, but also the others in the group.
Desire Stars	We... shouldn't have, ahh... been out in the open... I'm--     "You're alive," says Ace, chiming in after Marcus. "Work forwards from there, not backwards."     There's a side-eye given to Neon, as if he were giving that advice to her, too. She looks tired, but moreso than that, withdrawn. In the camp, she seems to allow Lucius and Clarine to tend to her only reluctantly, as if she'd rather turn them away but knows she can't, really.     "Yo, Roy," calls Ace, sat upon a log across from the tree which the young commander is resting against. He holds up the shattered half of Maltet, after a few moments of fiddling with it. "Got a present for you."     He stands up, walks over and takes a knee, offering Roy the fragment. There are smudges on it that weren't before--letters, actually, in black permanent marker.     To my biggest fan: A reminder that the verdict isn't cast until the gavel falls. -Ace Ukiyo     When Merlinus asks for volunteers, Neon jumps at the chance. Most of the fort's rations had gone bad, so we've only got a day or two of food and drink in reserve if foraging fails.     "I might be able to help with that," says Neon. "I'm no good at foraging, but I can arrange to have rations delivered here if you don't mind me making some calls. If I put a rush order on it, they might be able to get it here before you have to start moving again..."
Dysnomia	Dysnomia'd taken it upon herself to be one of the immediate scouts--sticking her head through warpgates and taking to the sky to take the measure of its safety. It was something she could do. It was some way she could help. Feverishly, she clung to whatever needed to be done. She found herself bringing water to Roy, when she felt the echo of thirst rising in his mind. Wordlessly taking the burden from flagging soldiers...Or even horses, carrying it on her own.     All you have is plasma and raw force. Where's your force multiplication. Where's your support. Where's your intel. Where's your-- Another need echoed through the voice of thought, another excuse to avoid spiraling into her own self-hatred, and Mia was off.     When they came to a stop, when they'd began to rest, when they ran out of things to DO except lick their wounds and ruminate, Dysnomia looked more miserable than when they'd all been on the run.     She looked...Haggard. Her body is wispy, half-substantial, her fingers trailing off into streaks in the air. Her wound is bleeding again, torn open in the chaos of the fight, smoky bloody snaking behind her like a scarf. The battle had taken its tool on her, and though Galle hadn't ripped into her with his weapon, the unrelenting power of everything else had hammered her down.     "We... shouldn't have, ahh... been out in the open... I'm--"     "Lord Roy. I must discourage you from speaking, especially if it's to beat yourself up."     "Listen to Marcus, Roy." She rallied to Markus' side, almost without thinking. But it was easy to plan where to take her words next. "There are a thousand-thousand potential futures and tradeoffs. There's a world where you played it slow and careful, and Galle had time to get reinforcements to resist more effectively. You made the best judgment you could, with the advice of your most trusted counsel. If you tell me you regret listening to them, I will call you a liar."     "...And. Crucially. We still haven't lost this war."     "We've got 'enough' weapons, but most of the spares will be lower-quality now. Most of the fort's rations had gone bad, so we've only got a day or two of food and drink in reserve if foraging fails."     Problems. Problems Dysnomia could solve. "I will pull the damn wagons myself, if I have to." Her eyes were already darting. A holographic screen splayed up in front of her, blueprints skirting past. "If we have time, I could rig together some kind of freight-moving machine. And I can get the raw materials to forge some more weapons from my workshop. I have plenty of steel..." Her workshop needed so much iron and steel to keep manufacturing going.     "Echo." Mia's eyes darted to the other dragon. "Can we count on you to keep everyone fed?"
Aidan Proudpick	If it were a better time, Aidan would be excited by all the new places, taking a full day to explore each one. A shipping hub, he's never been in the middle of one of these. Purple trees?! Several dozen glowing neon signs that offer wares in a dreary dark alleyway. Instead, Aidan is putting himself to use as a scout. In those places of wilderness, he can be seen scrambling over trees, leaping from one to another to get ahead of the group and find the next warp gate. In places of civilization Aidan is of a different mind. He roams ahead to find whatever he can of food. It'll bust his Tridaeg money fueled budget. Before each warpgate jaunt, Aidan reappears with bags of bread, or large bowls of instant ramen, with food bars and most importantly, jugs of water. Maybe enough for everyone to have a single meager meal. "They pushed hard to get over the mountains, Roy." Aidan waves his hand, forming a sort of Tenser's Floating Disk of air, letting the city forage bounce and bobble along. A glance up at Merlinus' horse, and then Roy. "He wanted it bad. Bad enough to push everyone and himself to the edge. And to chance them all against Forblaze." At the camp itself, Aidan is happy to take the brunt of stew making, as he certainly doesn't find it boring. He's happy to cook, and seeing as he has only lived with a cauldron and a fire stove all of his life, stews are something you just learn to make. Until Clarine has to pull him and find that his breastplate has been ripped down the shoulder and he has a large chunk of meat and fur loosely bandaged in place. It takes a bit of fussing to wrangle the squirrel in place to do it. After a moment to wriggling back up to the stew, he glances over at Merlinus. "I got weapons, but they ain't exactly for fighting armies, they're for shooting down guards." Aidan tries to scoot between help and getting forced into having a working shoulder.
Echolalia	Echolalia checked up on Fae, of course, and on Roy. She can provide some herbs to help with pain and encourage healing but she's not actually a medic and these wounds seem extra special in a real bad way. The one day she goes off to examine the local wildlife, Echolalia thinks, this happens. That kind of research is important if she really wants to do her work without causing too much damage. She doesn't look like she'd just been in a stressful battle that was barely escaped but mostly because she wasn't. She is uncharacteristically worried in her expression and is continuously glancing at Roy's wounds with deep concern. ''Echo, Can we count on you to keep everyone fed?'' Echolalia startles out of her thoughts and she smiles at her. "Oh yeah, for sure. The selection will be limited because I'm still learning the way of the land but oranges are super delicious this time of year." She looks to Merlinus, "Can only do vegetables, of course, but broccoli's real easy--" As she says so, several stalks of broccoli poof out and off her body, though she'll have to remove them first. "Maybe some chickpeas for some tasty tsaty protein?" She glances back to Roy. "Are there um. Any legendary healing herbs around or..." She's unsure what else to say or do but at least she can keep people from starving to death!
Flamel Parsons	Flamel Parsons... has been working. Working and working and working. The situation isn't his fault, of course, but he's not going to slack in a dark hour when Roy's recovering. He's been setting up clairvoyance amplifiers and pulsing his psychic senses out in huge waves. He plans on locating any useful materials by locating the positive psychic energies concentrated around them, or finding nearby settlements or populated places to wield the group's pan-factional authority to take spare resources. And he's hard at work on helping the caravan recover psychologically. The damage, mental damage, is going to be intense. The violation of a safe place... you can't possibly define how intense that can be. It's awful that he can't give much help to Fae, Chad, Lugh...     Man! Camp counseling is *hard* in a war camp, what little remains of it. Food's covered. Weapons are partially getting covered. What about moving those wagons? Well, telekinesis is good in bursts, but he can't help there either... at least he can chart paths, find opportunities, and keep morale up. That, and tuning into long-distance telepathy with Elibe...     He's keeping distance from Roy. He told the boy to not forgive him, so he's gonna make sure he doesn't get the chance to. But he's in and out of the camp with a spy's ever-listening ear, to evesdrop on the conversations, and of course, to be accosted by whoever might object to what he wound up doing to Roy to get him out. He can't go and keep himself away from consequences.
Odette Raskins	Following the escape from Galle, Odette had been burning the candle at both ends working on Roy's injuries. She had opted not to think too hard (or at all) about how many times he might've been clinically dead, focusing instead on the more important matter of making sure he could be resuscitated properly. After treating his most grievous wounds with a combination of stitches, bandages, homebrewed chemical concoctions, and Lucius' and Clarine's magic, the EMT could only muster up enough energy to hook up IV and blood bags to him by feel alone. When Odette awakens at the clearing, she can't remember ever actually going to sleep. She doesn't remember anything between the emergency operation and being here, actually, just that she had been working on Roy one moment, blinked twice, and now... This! Sitting up from wherever she had been left following the move to the clearing, the EMT rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, notices all the dried blood stains on her gloves, then hastily pulls them off and chucks them aside before remembering... How many people died after all that? How are the kids doing? How's Roy doing? She can't be lying around now when everyone's still in such bad shape! Odette forces herself up onto her feet right after getting up, takes two steps, then sucks in a breath at an aching pain shooting through her leg. That's as good of a reminder as any about how terrifying it had been to be on the other end of Maltet's icy blade even without being a direct target of it nor a dragon. Like Khosa, she'll try and get Lucius and Clarine to focus on the more direly wounded first. She can still limp along easily enough while there's no immediate threat, at least, and she can even fake being fine once she's close enough to see Roy and several others already gathered by the tree. "H-hey, Roy. How's..." She starts, trailing off briefly once she realizes he still looks terrible. "... This look?" She adds hastily-ish, pivoting smoothly right into sticking her hand into her bag, rummaging around a little before pulling out a little three-pack of bite sized hazelnut chocolate candies in gold wrapping. "I packed a few too many, and... They taste really good. H-here." She offers while lying easily enough. She had been saving it for a post-victory treat after overcoming Galle, but he doesn't need to know that. Merlinus' assessment of the situation really makes the gravity of the situation sink in, though, and Odette doesn't know how to alleviate any of those concerns. "I can get more medical supplies the next time I head back, but... Nn. I-It's still going to take proper bedrest for a lot of our injured to recover. Unless we can get a... Um." She glances over at Dysnomia when she mentions rigging a machine together. "Some kind of mobile... Medbay? Or even just a rest area that people can sleep in while we're on the move that's more.. Er. Comfortable than the wagon."
Petra Soroka	The Beauty of Ash brings up the rear through the gate, just ahead of Lilian. Skulkingly on all fours, pinpoint limbs making less of an indent in the soft forest ground then a human footprint, all its infinite fracture points have sealed back together invisibly, except where three-dimensional fractals of its orange hydraulic blood filter through them. As iridescent glass-blue and alien orange, and semi-animalistic shaped, it looks as at home in this forest as anything, but once the army comes to a stop, the mech peels apart and spills back into the compact mirror in Petra's hand.     Scuffed up and slightly bloodied, but with no wounds deeper than lacerations, Petra is in a much better position to *help* than be helped. Too bad she doesn't have a particularly useful skillset *to* help with, besides being frenetically overwilling to do physical labor-- which is itself stymied by the vestiges of psychic overexertion leaving herself dizzy enough that she falls face-flat while trying to carry firewood.     She is also, somehow, the second-most-ethical choice of camp counselor here. After Lucius, obviously.     This is, somehow, Petra's first time seeing Fae in big-mode, but her best means of comforting Fae right now is a bump and an angular neck hug from the mutually big-mode Beauty of Ash before dismounting it. She lingers just a little longer to pet a crystalline arm along Fae's back, marveling silently at the Beauty of Ash's translation of her softness into Petra's senses, but unless Fae reaches out for comfort from Petra, she has another priority right now. She sets herself down nearby Roy, fishing through her now-familiarly iridescent compact mirror for any supplies that could help while keeping an eye on him.     It wasn't just that Petra was standing next to Roy to get groundpounded when Galle dove down-- Maltet passed straight through the Beauty of Ash's chest too, only barely not skewering Petra in its path. Side-eyeing the golden wound in Roy's chest, it's easy for Petra to superimpose the jarring absence of hardlight scraping and clinking that a similar wound would mean in the mech, and somehow, that makes the gore seem more visceral to her. Unhealing wounds might be a bit of a fixation for her, but this one on Roy is profoundly unsettling to her, and it makes her words move faster than her thoughts.     "... It's like Sophia and Forblaze. Or-- or Durandal with the dragon in Juteaux." She might be looking at the wound for a little too long, actually. "I guess we already knew, but this is sort of the first time that being a quarter dragon has ever been, like, practically relevant for you, isn't it? We got out of it alive, and now we know to be careful around the Divine Weapons, but... it's kind of jarring, huh."     She lifts her head to search for where Sophia ended up, still lingeringly disoriented. "Sophia? Did it just... get better over time? Or...."     Finally finding what she's looking for, Petra pulls out her reliable little medical kit and a L-Corp branded case full of healing bullets. She puts them to her side, then leans back on her hands and puffs out a dizzy-drained exhalation. "I, uh, can't help with that, but I can help put some of the others back together, at least."
Lilian Rook	The bile taste of retreat clings firmly to the back of Lilian's throat, until it feels harder and harder to breathe the further she is from the fighting. Retreat through the Warpgate is something she had almost forgotten was something she used to assume was a tactical given, and yet Cecilia actually calling for it is what bitterly singles out as the real thing; a genuine canny strategist within the little army. That recognition carries her a little ways after her momentum fades from 'covering for the wounded', and wears off only once they've gone far enough for Lilian to accept that she couldn't possibly have made herself risk Fae anyways; and feel no better for the rationalization.     It starts to bother her that Roy's people even grit their teeth and hang their heads and walk with the defeat more heavily on their backs than anyone she knows. The scathing truth that at no point did any of them believe themselves invincible intensifies the sourceless vexation of having let them down.     "Nobody was expecting him to choose something that bold. Some of us actually should have, and it's not most of you blaming yourselves right now."     "A high-speed low-drag guns blazing stunt like that was the best tactical choice and anyone who has been paying close attention to our shortcomings would have done the same if they had enough confidence."     "You have us 'Otherworlders' to blame moreso than any inexperience or miscoordination. Our response strike was supposed to crush their offensive; instead our line was on the verge of total collapse. This decision was to save the lives of our number as much as it was to save Roy's."     "It wasn't wrong to expect everything to keep going as it had. It was all but sealed. But people who want it badly enough will find a way; always. What you should take away isn't some minor decision you could have done differently, but to fully grasp the nature of people like Galle, and understand there are still more like him ahead of us."     It all sounds very stern and noble, maturely forgiving and politely self-blaming, but all Lilian wants is for the soldiers who'd fought their hardest to stop intensifying how quietly furious she already is. By the time she sits down to pretend to relax, she is rendered nauseous by the churning emotions she's thought buried and forgotten years ago that rise up from the pit of her stomach like burning sick. More than anything, she doesn't want any of Roy's people to see her regress-- backslide-- relapse like this, here and now. She's not sure how much it's within her power.     "Truly I have no idea what we'd do without you, Seneschal." Lilian says to Merlinus, offering her bravest attempt at an appreciative smile. "People like you are worth more than fine swords when everyone who wields them is swallowing their pride. It's thanks to you that we have anything at all." She looks distracted and ill, but she fully means every word.
Lilian Rook	"Anyone too injured to fight right now shouldn't be fighting tomorrow even if they're fully healed by a miracle; morale is frankly just too low and no one has confidence in themselves. Food is something I can put a bandage on if we stay here long enough for my magic to recover. Equipment . . . not for this many people. I'm an alchemist, not a smith; small batches are the best I can manage. I can begin drafting out a plan of attack, if perhaps Sophia wants to involved, but . . ."     If Lucius looks like he'll actually rest once the serious cases are taken care of, Lilian will gladly keep to herself. If he enters a posture of Needing to be busy, she'll carefully dismantle her armour to exposed the mysterious wounds that concentrate at her fingers and dissipate as they go up her arms; raw and glisteningly bloody yet hard to characterize as either cuts or burns or abrasions, breaking a minority of skin yet unevenly penetrating deep under it without connection. She won't do either without first approaching Fae being rubbed in dragon form and first putting her whole back into a stress-relieving lift-hug (that she manages to take her feet off the ground with) though.
Lilian Rook	'Got a present for you.'     Lilian looks aside on the autographed Malted fragment and can't decide whether it's deeply, blasphemously irreverent, or really cute. The jury hangs.     'I can arrange to have rations delivered here if you don't mind me making some calls'     "I'll save my energy for our equipment situation, then." says Lilian. "Both require a lot of magic from me, and it sounds as if--"     'I got weapons, but they ain't exactly for fighting armies, they're for shooting down guards.'     "Nobody actually has weaponry beyond what they've brought with them. If nothing else, I'll gladly upgrade the spare arms we have right now, so that they'll last longer." She looks to Merlinus for confirmation. "That much is far easier than fabricating fifty odd replacements and sundry ammunition."     'If we have time, I could rig together some kind of freight-moving machine. And I can get the raw materials to forge some more weapons from my workshop. I have plenty of steel...'     Lilian watches Dysnomia with the obvious intent of trying to decide whether she's making that up like Aidan, and then hesitantly trying to imagine what it could possibly look like if true. ". . . Mundane sorts of things like those are better handled without the use of magic anyways. It's inefficient."     'I can get more medical supplies the next time I head back, but... Nn. I-It's still going to take proper bedrest for a lot of our injured to recover.'     "Take a break already. Once my fingers are healed, I can handle the busywork." Lilian sighs. "I may not look it, but I do have the equipment and training for medical first response. If Lord Roy is stable then I'll trust you to not screw anything up by resting."     'and now we know to be careful around the Divine Weapons,'     "We already did you imbecile." Lilian snaps. "Do you think you'd survive that just because you're an ordinary human? Ekesachs will take your head clean off like anyone else."
Marigold	Most things are edible, Khosa finds. There's a translucent white berry that makes Khosa's mouth cottony-numb, and a frog-rabbit whose meat causes sharp dizziness and shimmering vision. The other weird-shaped fruits, nuts, and green shoots are all benign; put together they start making a starchy stew under Aidan's care, along with purchased noodles and purified water, that smells vaguely like cinnamon or cardamom and tastes a bit like coq au vin.      "Big lizards," Merlinus murmurs thoughtfully at Khosa, drops a box on his thumb while leaned halfway into the wagon, curses, kicks his stubby old man legs, and then extricates himself to dust off his hands like a cat preening itself after a fall. "Hmph. It's better than nothing, but I don't suppose you can magically make them look like something else? If you haven't noticed, big lizards might as well be a Bernish flag these days."      He opens his mouth to talk tactics, but Cecilia seems to magically sense it and smoothly slides over to interpose herself.      "Our original plan is still good." "Hey..." "This was only a setback. Between Perceval's army and my troops we managed to rally, Galle's only worrying about himself. We still mean to launch a surprise attack against Douglas's forces in the capital to seize the king and break the coup's hold." She looks back at- well, everyone- in varying stages of 'beaten up'. "... We'd want a smaller team for that anyway. Ideally."      "I could've told her that." "It's my responsibility to make sure everyone's on the same page, Merlinus." "Ah, I see, you just want an old man to be lonely..." "Hey, now."      Accordingly, he smiles warmly at Echo and Mia, who promise to solve his logistical woes. "I won't say no to good vegetables, but do you have any that'll keep for the road? We don't have a pickling kit. As for healing herbs..."      He gestures around at the violet alien rainforest, then shrugs. "This is the Otherworld, isn't it? You'd know better than any of us." Its untrammeled flora shows promise, at least, but she'll have to go hunting herself!      "Steel weapons... that'll be a great help, Dysnomia. It's no silver, but it's a cut above what we'll have to fall back on now," Merlinus adds after a moment of thought, leaning back on the once-Bernish wagon's edge. "Marcus and Dieck can guide you on the designs we'd be familiar with."      He nods firmly at Neon- "Thank you kindly. As long as they'll keep in warm weather, that's all I ask! Old Merlinus can make a brick taste rich; just you watch."- and then chuckles warmly along with Lilian, leaning back into the wagon to rearrange boxes again. "Now you, you're a little too kind to me! When you feel useless, you fill up with this fretful energy. That's all. Stacking boxes and getting wagons is the least I can do."      Petra petting Fae is rewarded with a baby-whalesong "aa--uu--!" that resonates in the Beauty even at its silent parts, and a little head-bonk against the mech's chest. But she doesn't seem urgently in need.      When Lilian lifts Fae, she's briefly stunned, and then wiggly-delighted in a way that almost threatens to escape Lilian's arms. "--euu!!", and she flaps her little wings hard enough to lift a couple of feet off the ground, land back on her haunches, and hug Lilian to her chest with stubby little arms before putting her back down, roles reversed.
Marigold	Sophia nods at Petra, and holds out her hands: there's only the thinnest hair's-breadth golden line across her fingers now. "It's taken a long time to fade... but it stopped hurting in a week or two," she murmurs. Gaze sliding to Lilian: "I'd be happy to help... um, what did you need exactly?"      But Lucius might be intercepting her first. He is indeed restless, and when he comes to her and she takes her armor off, he draws in a tense little breath. "So you've given of yourself like this, have you..." he murmurs from behind. His healing stave is drawn over each cut an inch from the skin, sealing them up with a warm-achey feeling like spending too long in bed.      Then he lays a hand on each of her shoulders. His thumb finds a tension-point intuitively, but he doesn't massage (yet). "... and in other ways, I see. It won't do to carry that inside yourself. Lilian, can I be of help?"      Roy looks up over his brow at Odette. 'Haggard' is the closest word. Everyone's been plying him with as much water as he can take, but his eyes are still sunken. "Ah- um... thank you." He forces a smile anyway, and lifts his left arm to take the little candies, nibbling on one and trying to get Lilina to take another. ("Oh, come on, Roy... they're for you.")      Everyone's praise and encouragements and don't-be-hard-on-yourselfs have buoyed him up a little, though he's still melancholically self-accusing at the same time he's a little flustered; just not saying it out loud.      He's still smiling, but his eyes take a second too long to find Petra when she speaks. He squirms a little, and the grimace that follows isn't entirely due to the pain of it.      "It's true. I've never... felt any different, from other people? I never felt 'apart'. When I-- found out, about my mom, I didn't think 'oh, that's why'." He holds his hand near his chest. His palm faintly catches the glow. He looks a little nauseated by it.      "I'm just Roy. Aren't I? Maltet doesn't think so, though. I guess it gets the last word." He's still looking down when Ace calls out to him and throws the hilt.      Roy grasps Maltet's blunt fragment-      -it sizzles and steams against his palm-      -he yelps, fumbles it, and catches it again on instinct-      -and this time it doesn't. The sizzling quiets down, as if whatever it was burning had been expunged from his palm.      "Oh," he pants, leaning back against the tree. His lips wobble into another smile, more pained but more sincere, as he looks between Ace and the inscription. "Your biggest fan... am I really? You're great. There's got to be lots of people." For now, he sets Maltet's fragment aside, but treasured within arm's reach.      "... Marcus." "Lord Roy? You really still shouldn't speak so much." "Then tell me more about my mother." ". . . Like what? Where am I supposed to start?" "I don't know. Anything..."
Khosa	Khosa warns others away from the frog-rabbit - it's an unpleasant sensation, and it takes her a few minutes to fix her vision, so she doesn't want to put anyone else through it in case it's worse for someone who's not as tough or body-aware as she is. (Dizziness is easier.) But any extra little white berries she sets aside - not edible, but it might be useful for something else, if an herbalist can take a look at it. Sometimes you want a numbing agent. She tests this herself by squashing one against the back of her hand, where it won't interfere with finger motion even if it leaves a numb patch. If we have time, I could rig together some kind of freight-moving machine. And I can get the raw materials to forge some more weapons from my workshop. I have plenty of steel... "I still think something alive is best." Khosa's a little stubborn. "A machine needs someone who knows how to fix it to fix it, and parts. So that's you, or Petra maybe, and not Merlinus, or anyone else with the army. But a horse they know how to deal with, and an inix mostly manages by itself; they'll eat anything, they're hard to hurt, and you can heal them if you have to." Can only do vegetables, of course, but broccoli's real easy-- Khosa does a double-take at Echolalia's ability to literally grow food. "Nice trick," she says, authentically impressed and not bothering to hide it. "Hey, if I give you a fruit, do you think you can grow more of it?" Pause. "I don't have it with me. Just, you know. Sometime." Now we know to be careful around the Divine Weapons... Khosa gives Petra a sour look at almost exactly the same time Lilian scolds her. She decides not to add to it, though the temptation is *real* strong. "Those things are dangerous, dragon or not," she agrees with Lilian instead. "I'm no dragon, which is why I volunteered to get his attention - I was sure I could handle that kind of injury better than Dysnomia can given the - it doesn't burn me like that." Khosa changed her words at the last minute, looking over at Roy - her mouth ran away with her again. She tries to cover from being about to talk about dragonslaying. "Doesn't mean even I can heal it forever." Khosa considers Roy for a long moment, then says: "Hold onto just feeling like Roy. Bodies... hmm. Maybe I have a different view, because I can change mine around; what it's shaped like, and how it acts, and how other things act on it. Maltet might strike against the way your body's made, but you're still Roy. Just Roy. It doesn't know, or care, anything about that - that's not what it's looking for, that's not what it's made to burn. The bit that's 'Roy' - your mind, the way you think, doesn't have anything to do with Maltet one way or the other." She runs her hand across her head, tangling it in the single tail of hair she keeps. "I'm not sure I said it right. I've never been good at that," she admits. I don't suppose you can magically make them look like something else? "No," Khosa says. "Maybe someone else can, but I can't. If it makes you feel better, they don't look THAT much like wyverns. Or I could get kanks, but people don't like giant beetles out in the Otherworlds, apparently." She shoots Lilian a glance at that - not an irritated glance, and if anything there's a very slight grin. She didn't mind that argument, even if she thinks the objection is silly. "But I like it when things are what they look like, so I don't think I can help much with that. Plus, I'm no mage." She wiggles her fingers. "What I do is something else, and it doesn't carry through to changing other beings. So maybe that's not the best idea anyway. I'll keep it in my back pocket though, just in case." Khosa pulls off the last of the heaviest plates - left shin - and tosses it on the pile with a clatter. She hates leaving these around, but it's not like she can burn them.
Dysnomia	"Oh my god. You're volunteering to be a pack animal?"     Dysnomia couldn't help but bgare her teeth, slightly, tensing. Her eyes darted, wild, too and fro, and her breathe came out hot, with the thick smell of ozone. She opened her mouth to say something. But then, her gaze flickered to Roy.     She felt dirty. She felt sick. Trembly and...What was she, a fucking physical laborer? What was next? Have her drag their fucking swords across Elibe? But. Marcus. Roy. Merlinus. Fae--     "I will pull the wagons until we get a replacement." Dysnomia decreed. Her hands closing into fists. "No longer. Understood? Understood."     "Or-- or Durandal with the dragon in Juteaux."     Dysnomia looked at Petra. At her own wound, in the middle of her body. At Petra again, expression incredulous. "When I was mangled by Durandal." Dysnomia inserted herself into the conversation, voice flat. "It took several weeks of intensive healing by Blemishine until it closed." And clearly, it never completely took. "I understand she is considered to be a rather incredible healer."     "We can hope that Roy's case is milder than mine, since Sophia's faded so quickly. For a variety of reasons. But. Regardless. It's best to assume that it will take more potent power, or a much longer timescale--or both--to mend that wound."     "Steel weapons... that'll be a great help, Dysnomia. It's no silver, but it's a cut above what we'll have to fall back on now,"     ". . . Mundane sorts of things like those are better handled without the use of magic anyways. It's inefficient."     Dysnomia wasn't entirely sure what the Dame Commander meant, whether to read it as a criticism or grudging recommendation. Surely she hadn't mistaken Dysnomia's methods for magic? No. It have been the other. "Now, I'm not a specialist in forging. But that horse knight did make an attempt to show me one or two things, while she was trying to fix her mistake...I'll see what I can do. Now...Don't look directly at the plasma unless you have protective eyewear." A pause. "...Or particularly sturdy eyes. I suppose."     Her suit hummed to life, as she opened up its dimensional storage. One by one, she removed large, steel slates from...Something like a fold in the air. Large, industrial plates, sinking into the ground where she let them sit from the sheer weight of them. The sort of thing that moves through heavy industrial plants, carved into specialized pieces by precise machinery.     ...Which wasn't entirely dissimilar to what happened to them here. In her own spot, off to the side, wisps of smoke lifted the steel, sprouting claws in middair that burned like a welder's torch, carving the steel expertly into parts. With Marcus and Dieck to guide her on the details, eventually, she lays down one blade--still glowing hot. And then another. And another. Like a one woman assembly line of smoke and claw.     Her expression is serious. Locked in. A project to work through. A thing to make. Her focus narrows on the task. Cutting metal into shape. She finds herself falling into a rythmn. A rare moment of something like peace.
Petra Soroka	"Do you think you'd survive that just because you're an ordinary human?"     Petra puts both her hands up defensively, and then stops doing that because it makes her less efficient at doing the task that would allow her to be useful right now. "W-well, no! I'd be dead as hell. Just, earlier, when we were talking about quarter-dragons, people were saying that it's basically undifferentiated from normal humans. This is a pretty relevant way that it's not. King Zephiel's got a Roy-and-Sophia-killing silver bullet still"     And also Fae, which is too horrifying to say out loud. And also Dysnomia and Echolalia, which is too irrelevant to say out loud. "When I-- found out, about my mom, I didn't think 'oh, that's why'."     Oh, no. Once again, Petra is struck by the reminder of why she likes everyone in this world so much, besides just Lilian's attachment to them. The concise expression of Roy's emotional state is so instantly communicative that Petra winces in reflection of his discomfort and falls silent for a minute to consider it. This may be the hidden Petra skill, only rarely ever utilized before: *empathy*.     "Oh, yeah. Because a sword that's meant for hurting a specific group of people doesn't just hurt you when it hits you, it also, like, defines, assigns, and characterizes a category on you through violence." Petra blinks, then adds after a few seconds, "Well, a spear, in this case."     "So now you're forced to think of yourself like 'a quarter dragon'. And every time you do, it's in the context of, like, a way that people can hurt you." Petra stares at the wound for a little longer, before finally breaking her gaze to flip open the clasps on her L-Corp case. She knocks the cylinder of her old revolver to the side and starts thumbing healing bullets in, so that she can start doing the ethical good job of shooting some of her allies.     "... I wonder if it'll still matter when all the Divine Weapons are gone. We know they're all breaking, or running out of pages, and Maltet's already gone. Once the things that, like, designate you as a categorical target are all gone, does the category even exist anymore? If the weapons all broke, like, thirty years ago, you basically *wouldn't* be a quarter dragon in any real way, right? Would you be happier never having that kind of... throughline with your mom, even if the only thing it matters for is getting stabbed?"     Petra snaps her revolver shut and shakes her head, radiating a dull resurgence of her under-skin aura along with it. "Woah, that was like, weirdly philosophical. And you've got holes in you, so you don't need that."     She pushes herself to her feet and thumbs the hammer of her revolver doctorly, searching around for a healing target Clarine and Lucius haven't already gotten to (with a glance over to Lilian specifically too, just in case). She drops a look to Maltet, broken, and Roy, mostly whole. "But, I mean, so *far*... you kind of got the last word, actually."
Echolalia	Echolalia considers. She'd have to go investigating the rainforest. It IS a rainforest so it probably has SOMETHING. Rainforests are ecologically diverse and super important! "I'm new to the area but I can certainly take a looksee..." She mulls on it for a moment before noticing that Mia seems... "Hey hey... no need to be upsetti spaghetti, Mia. Helping others is a good thing. Looking a little silly's okay. Just laugh along with it if you gotta. I love how you care so much about these people that you're willing to be a little silly about it." ''Hey, if I give you a fruit, do you think you can grow more of it?'' "Oh yeah that'd help a lot." She extends a hand out. Then Khosa admits that she doesn't have it with her and she lowers her hand. "If the soil quality is too bad for it I'd have to maintain it, but if you found anything here, I'd appreciate a looksee, I can figure out what's poisonous and what's safe and grow more of the safe stuff." She brushes off the broccoli off her body into a vine basket that just pulls itself out of the ground to collect them. Some potatoes push out of her body a moment afterwards and she starts brushing those off into the basket as well. "If I can get a feel for the local eccosystem I can probably refill our food coffers a lot faster, otherwise I'm sticking to growing it out of ''me'' because this is a raniforest and all." ''I guess it gets the last word.'' "I mean it broke and you're alive so you get the last word, actually." Echolalia says before Roy grasps the fragment and burns himself. Echo throws her armsi nto the air. "Well not if you do that!" She protests. "I'm gonna go out and look for something helpful in the meantime." She adds. And then--yes! She goes hunt for herbs, growing wings as she flies off to do just that!
Odette Raskins	"Some of us actually should have, and it's not most of you blaming yourselves right now." "You have us 'Otherworlders' to blame moreso than any inexperience or miscoordination." "This decision was to save the lives of our number as much as it was to save Roy's." Odette's chest feels tighter at hearing that, but she doest' know what to do with thatfeeling right now. She knows what she can do about it later, and she knows what she's been doing about that same feeling that came from her encounter with Merelisa, but the feeling itself has't lessened one bit since then. Twice now. Twice, she's failed to be anything more than a minor inconvenience for far stronger, far more skilled, and far better armed combatants. Hell, she's probably one of those people that the group even had to consider being at risk if they had chosen not to retreat as soon as they did. The guilt and the frustration makes her want to scream, but she can't. "Ah- um... thank you." Roy's looking at her, after all, and she needs to at least pretend to have it together while he is. Odette forces a smile just like he does, and she even gives the young Lord and Lilina light pats on the shoulder. "That's why these come in a three pack. Ah, j-just make sure to chew enough so you don't.. Um. Choke on the hazelnut bits." She's tempted to give Roy some water, too, but Odette resists that urge and instead takes out a handheld scanner doohickey that looks kind of like a smaller GameBoy Advance (but not a Micro). "Just gonna do a quick check of your blood levels, okay? Even if the wounds aren't getting any worse, we need to make sure there's enough for you to recover more... Um. More." She's worried about those strange burns, moreso when he holds his hand near the glowing wounds and especially when catching Maltet burns his hand. Opening her mouth and shutting in short order, Odette cycles through the health scanner's modes a few times before she holds it up towards Roy, trying to get a better read on both his blood levels (does he need more?) and whether those burns are 'plain' magical fire burns that she can treat with more burn cream or some other kind of thing that she'd need to prod Lucius and Clarine about. Another thing to hit her in the gut about still not being able to pick up, despite trying for so long. "Take a break already. Once my fingers are healed, I can handle the busywork." "You do? That's good... I-I was getting a little worried about putting too much on Father Lucius and Miss Clarine, but..." Odette pauses as her relief turns to guilt again. "What about you? I got some sleep on the way here, I think." She's pretty sure sleep happened between treating Roy and suddenly being here, anyway. "Y-you should rest, too, Dame Commander. Y-you're actually fighting at all, and... And I can get some rest after. Besides, you're way more vital to everyone here than I am." Odette says that far more easily than even she would have expected, and there's that tightness in her chest again that comes and goes. "Your biggest fan... am I really?" That, however, gets full-on belly laugh out of Odette. It's what feels like a rare moment of mirth in this otherwise dreary situation, and it catches her off-guard just enough that she can't help but laugh at Ace's showmanship. "M-mister Ace! Aww, that's sweet. You might make some of us jealous, though." She chides playfully, still giggling a little as she settles down and contemplates chugging an energy drink or actually taking a break like Lilian said.
Lilian Rook	'Ah, I see, you just want an old man to be lonely...'     'Hey, now.'     Lilian, already smiling faintly at the Bernish flag remark, snickers for a half-second, then shields her mouth as she whispers the words 'get her ass' out loud.     'Now you, you're a little too kind to me! When you feel useless, you fill up with this fretful energy. That's all.'     "Certainly, but people spend it in all sorts of ways; if they even make use of it at all." Lilian says. "One in ten people do anything productive with it, and most here tend to think they're too good for stacking boxes anyways. I make it a policy not to overlook whoever cooks your dinner."     The matter is firmly settled by her being squomshed into Fae. At first it startles her enough to freeze, but Fae's giant fluffy touch is sufficiently different from A Human Adult's that her flinch reflex isn't nearly as pronounced as, say, even with Lucius, and so she ends up laughing into Fae's down and saying "Well well! It looks like someone hasn't had uppies in a long time!"     'I'd be happy to help... um, what did you need exactly?'     "A second seer I can actually trust." Lilian says to the other dragon*. "As perfect, stunning, endlessly resourceful and supremely multitalented as I am, my education as a mage is somewhat narrowly focused. Someone with a level head and a broader sphere of care would help calibrate the success rate of our next steps tremendously; if you don't mind a little incitement." she says.     Then it's made clear in her troubled silence and wandering gaze that she expected Lucius to make much less of a deal out of it than he does. The assumption is perfectly deranged of course; nobody would normally fail to look twice at injuries that strange and difficult to heal, but her unspoken expectation is that shrugging and glaze over anything unfamiliar is just what people do. Now she doesn't quite know what to say when plied with a hundred little aching shivers up her spine and the sensibly worried care of a professional healer and counselor.     'So you've given of yourself like this, have you...'     "I apologize if I've betrayed your mental image of me, but even I pay a price for the arts." Lilian says, evasively, looking distractedly away. "If it's not a staff or a book, then it's your memories, isn't it? It's not all that different from how things work here."     '... and in other ways, I see. It won't do to carry that inside yourself. Lilian, can I be of help?'     "I . . . don't . . ." Lilian haltingly checks her surroundings as if expecting either a prompter or a candid camera. "Know what to tell you." she begins, then bites her lip guiltily. The knot in her shoulders twitches under his thumb. "It's old baggage. Years ago, people you don't know, about things that don't matter to you. When I was a different person walking a different path." Lilian says, and then knows perfectly well she won't deflect him that easily. She braces by letting her breath go.     "It's just that . . . Looking at Galle, I couldn't but think he seemed . . ." Lilian squeezes her upper arm once with her healed fingers. "Radiant. In that way that men freed of all other concerns are. He was so fierce, so free, that I somehow couldn't help but envy him. It was unworthy of me. For all I've said about his being trapped under the Bernish banner, at that moment he was light enough to soar to heights that I've been too heavy to reach for a very long time."
Aidan Proudpick	"If nothing else, I'll gladly upgrade the spare arms we have right now, so that they'll last longer." Aidan lifts his eyebrows at that, "Good power, that one." But she's right. Everything is contingent on getting back home and getting weapons and bringing them here, not what he can do right now. His eyes roam towards the Beauty of Ash. He's extremely proud of his new wind armor. And just watching THAT move, every unbelievable shape shift. Watching blood move in a way that should be blood, but isn't. Aidan takes a moment to think about it, finally. He nods his head, "Amazing creature. Armor?" He offers to Petra, geniunely, but in passing. No energy put into it beyond a moment of true observation. Echolalia speed runs gardening on her body. Incredulous eyes track Echolalia up into the sky. "Ah. Well, so... just stock up on potatoes and apples from her, that'll keep. Onions and garlic. Anyone can cook with onions and garlic." Unfortunately, Aidan wonders aloud next to Echidna and Dieck. "What WOULDA happened if she ate me." Legendary weapon senses in Aidan tingle. He watches Roy grab the spear and then frowns. A grab, a leap of the weapon, then he grabs it again. His eyes track the movement. Ears shoot forward, picking up every sound. The scrap of wood against palm. The grimace of teeth. "Miss Sophia. What's that glow?" Aidan thoughtfully rolled the spoon through the spoon, "I'd almost think Maltet was burning that glow off."
Flamel Parsons	Hmm. Nothing human, or at least nothing meaningfully thinking, in the vicinity. Amplified clairvoyance picks up nothing, so Flamel picks it up and comes back home with a sheepish smile and a promise of hope and more options. He'll figure something out! He won't ever show pessimism.     "We still mean to launch a surprise attack against Douglas's forces in the capital to seize the king and break the coup's hold... We'd want a smaller team for that anyway. Ideally."     "We'll need them moving fast, for sure!" Flamel calls out, as he returns. The rolled map under his arm, sketched by hand and full of negative red X markings that show total absence of civilization, is enough to show his results, because you wouldn't be able to see it on his face. "When we're this beat-up, we just need to figure a way to get a strike team in place *at speed*. What's our method there? I mean, no spare wagons, but I'm sure we can find a way to move faster than wyvern patrols, even if it's *just once!* Some kind of well-pathed charge? I could..."     He frowns and puts a hand to his chin. "I feel like someone's going to notice if I bring in a Psychonaut stealth jet. But if I brought one in fast enough, and if the team was small enough -- maybe a dozen, two dozen -- I could just..." He gestures, broadly, helplessly. "Outrun the consequences, you know? But that's all I have."
Lilian Rook	'I feel like someone's going to notice if I bring in a Psychonaut stealth jet. But if I brought one in fast enough, and if the team was small enough -- maybe a dozen, two dozen -- I could just...'     "A dozen is already pushing it." Lilian semi-corrects. "But I'm hardly going to complain about committing to the hard-press strategies now that we absolutely need them. If we don't pull off the coup then there's hardly any point in worrying about what comes next. Being humble and keeping our heads down has only gotten us so far."     'Good power, that one.'     "What fucking power? Do you think I'm some sort of cape mutant like you, little eugenics boy?" Lilian spits. "I'm utilizing two decades of hard work, study and practice; don't fucking insult me. Or at least fall over and kneel in awe of the power you should."
Petra Soroka	"Amazing creature. Armor?"     When Petra dismounts the Beauty of Ash through its body shattering apart, the countless hardlight fragments flow like razor-sharp glittering gravel into her mirror, shards encompassing shards encompassing shards in mutual extradimensional microreflections until the entire two-ton mech folds itself into her hand. She runs a thumb along the mirror surface protectively and squints at Aidan. The mental math of whether this could possibly be some sort of insult or, worse, a sincerely meant compliment that dirties her by association with him is visible on her face, until she tentatively settles on the comment being relatively harmless.     "... Mech. The Beauty of Ash, is its name."     Petra agrees that it's amazing, but for Aidan to acknowledge that feels faintly violatory in the way that the Beauty of Ash has always, by design, felt slightly violatory. Using it is a contract where she flays her translucent skin and bares a raw nervous system to the world, where the beating heart of 'Petra Soroka' is visible inside its chest-- being uncomfortably seen is half of the thesis statement. So she can't complain about that too much.     She reconciles this by agreeing, but being snotty about it. "Of course it's amazing. It's mine." "I mean, no spare wagons, but I'm sure we can find a way to move faster than wyvern patrols, even if it's *just once!*"     Petra turns her attention to Flamel, and, without saying anything at first, holds up her compact mirror above her head with both hands. After a few seconds, she adds, "I can carry... like, one or two." This doesn't actually solve the problem but she just seems very excited to suggest her mech as a solution to every request.
Desire Stars	After a conversation with Merlinus about the particular needs of moving an amry (even one of this size) Neon is confident at least that she can use her connections to reach out to a few merchants. As Echolalia has the food taken care of, and Khosa seems willing to provide lizards, she gets to work on feed, and the pickling kit Merlinus mentioned a want of.     "No, no," she says, pacing back and forth. "I'd need enough for... two or three times that," she says, smiling politely out of habit, "Horses and..." She looks confirmingly at Khosa, waving a little to get her attention."Llllizards? Lizards, yes. Big ones. Horse-sized." A polite little laugh. "I know, I know. It's just that this is going to be a long trip. You can? Great. Also--do you still know that guy that owns the supermarket chain...? Mm? You do? Okay..." ... "And just to be sure, it's..." ... "Oh--one more thing, before I forget... would you happen to know someone I could buy a trailer from? A small kind. Really small. For an animal to pull. Uh huh, uh huh... got it... and what was the brand again? Got it. Thanks so much--yeah, I appreciate it if you didn't tell them," she frowns. "I'm already kind of in hot water there anyway." She sighs. "Yeah, I know. You too, bye."     From there, a conversation with the market owner... "...yes, I'm that Neon! Oh, haha! Well, I'm glad your nephew is such a big fan. Oh, that's no problem. How about a shoutout, too? I bet she'd love that." She paces back and forth. "Happy to! Me? Well, I was wondering--are you still making your own pickled radish? Well, I'd love some, of course, but I'm actually thinking about getting into pickling." She holds one arm around her waist, then laughs. "No! But that would be a pretty crazy stream, right? Maybe you could guest star," she teases. "No, I'm going to need to pickle a bunch of stuff for a long trip and I was wondering if you had any advice..." She beams, for the first time in what feels like weeks. "Oh, lots. Enough for... twenty or thirty people, for a month minimum. Really? That's great. I'll give them a call. Yes--I look forward to it, thank you. And again, that number was..."     After another call, Neon hangs up and smilingly informs Merlinus. "Since Echolalia can make food, and Khosa can get you those lizards, I talked to a friend of mine that owns a ranch, and she put me in contact with a farm supply store to take care of feed for the animals Khosa mentioned. You're also going to get a pickling setup like you mentioned, plus a trailer--that's a kind of wagon--to hold it all." --- Your biggest fan... am I really? You're great. There's got to be lots of people.     "More than you could count. But not many people get close to a star without being blinded," Ace says with typically casual smugness. "If you're not my biggest, you're up there." He nods at Roy's palm, where the fragment of Maltet burned its last.     "Not to mention you lived through a legendary weapon. Pretty prestigious club," he says. As with much of what he says, it's unclear whether the implication he just made is bullshit or not. But his smile, and the little finger-gun salute he gives, those are verifiably genuine. Then tell me more about my mother.     Ace's smile sobers up a little. He leans forwards, gently squeezes Roy's shoulder, and heads further into the thicket to think, flipping his ever-returning golden denarius into the air to catch it with a swipe of his palm.
Flamel Parsons	"I can carry... like, one or two."     "And how's the throwing arm?" Flamel asks, brightly! "Because maybe that can go farther than you think." He has no respect for how awful this offered idea probably is, but he's more than happy to provide it because it engages Petra in just the right way.     "Being humble and keeping our heads down has only gotten us so far."     "It's less about humility and more... Zephiel, and the people supporting him, they're pretty competent. Getting a jet out here will involve a lot of people, and our opsec is *good* but it's not *perfect*. You just never know how far the spy network of a man like that might go! Though espionage is a pretty rare field around here." Flamel admits sheepishly, shrugging with a wide gesture. "Still -- if we do this once, and only once, and we do it fast enough, I could push it through quick enough to outrun any intelligence reports."
Marigold	Merlinus produces a jovial little chortle in response to Lilian's praise, and amiably nods off Khosa setting aside her plans as not-ideal, but then he thinks for a moment, slows in his work, and pauses as he rotates the idea of giant beetle horses. "... So how do they taste?" he finally hazards, unsure if it's culturally-insensitive.      Neon calling for him rouses him from the wagon-rummaging again, and he bonks his head on a slat he isn't used to, mumbling Roy-appropriate curses. "Huh? Feed for the lizards? Then... we'll actually be using those?" He glances between Khosa and Neon, sighs, says "Well, I suppose we should spare Mia of the burden," and hands Khosa a few iron swords to trade for them.      "I'll have fun with the pickling. I sure hope that makes up for having to deal with strange reptiles," he says sternly, hand-on-hip. Oh, Merlinus.      The numbing berry works on Khosa's hand, but it's less effective. Mucus membrane absorption? It might be nice for open wounds. Or dentistry!      Echolalia can find more of those; she also finds strange astringent seed-pods like dried beans that promote clotting, a red vitamin-overloaded frilly moss, a hand-sized red flower that just smells really relaxing, and some kind of pitcher plant that's half-full of a soporific sap (if she can filter out the caught bugs). Not a bad haul for a place that doesn't seem especially mystical!      Roy sponges up Khosa's words with down-tilted eyes and a squirmy mouth. "You're probably right. I'm still the same Roy. I can worry, but I don't think dragons and humans are so different at heart, anyway... but that's exactly why it feels so bad. We all still have to live in bodies, don't we? And finding out that the body I have is..."      He nods in Petra's direction, as she anticipates what he might've said more articulately, and then struggles for a moment to add to it.      "... I didn't think I lived in a world that judged me like this. I didn't think I was someone the Heroes' weapons would have killed. I don't get to ignore that. If I do, I might die. If I haven't changed, everything else changed around me."      He lays quietly for a moment, breathing shallowly and resting, and then shakes his head at Petra's apology. "I don't know. I don't know what would make me happier. I wish..." He struggles again for a moment. His eyes scrunch.      "... I just wish I'd ever gotten to talk to my mom about it. So any good could've come from it at all." Instead of this, implicitly; with none of the community or connection, and all of the the-world-can-kill-you. Opening his eyes again, he smiles at Petra, Ace, and Echolalia uneasily.      "I don't know. I don't want to do it like this every time. Eckesacks is pretty big." After that little crack, and before Ace vanishes into the foliage, he does a double-take at the rider's back. Wasn't there something about Guinivere guessing his age, too...?
Marigold	"Miss Sophia. What's that glow? I'd almost think Maltet was burning that glow off."      It's a good question! Sophia bites her thumbnail uneasily while looking at Roy's wounds. "Ah, um... I think it's... humans can 'wield' magic. But dragons have magic in their bodies... they need it to live... I think the weapons were made to 'ignite' that...?"      That answers Mia's implicit question, too. "You were hurt worse, Mia... but also... I'm more flesh-and-blood. Roy might be even more... so I think he'll be okay."      Odette's medical scanning corroborates Sophia's hypothesis. Beneath the glow, the wound is like a nearly-clean disintegration; nearby organs are bruised with some internal cavity bleeding, but little external blood loss. He's as hydrated as his body can process, but he could use more iron. Where the glow gets its energy from isn't visible to her scanner, which probably means magic. It's a little reminiscent of the glowing edges of singed paper, only three-dimensional.      "Well, if you say so," Lilina caves, and takes one-of-three of the little candies from Roy reluctantly. "But he's having two. That's fair." By what standard??      Dieck goes over to inform Mia on the sorts of weapons that the Elibeans use- quantity of steel will be useful as a backup to Lilian's quality of enchantment- and leans against a wagon, looking awkwardly off into the woods. He can't look at the plasma because it's too bright; he can't look at her because it'd feel rude somehow; so he just ends up awkwardly-sweetly bantering about sword design to fill the lull of the work.      "Now weight that a lot further forward than you think you'd want to. That's for the Etrurian style; it puts a little heft behind it, and if we want precision we'll half-sword it, right? Uh, thanks."      Lucius lowers his voice, channeling healing magic through his hand into Lilian's tense back. It's not quite a massage, but maybe he feels the real deal would be intrusive. "If there's no point to telling me, there's no point to telling me," he says sedately-sweetly. "But since you are... is it that you didn't know who you could tell? I'm sorry."      She can hear him shift behind her; not uncomfortably, but thoughtfully. A gently heartbroken breath out.      "To grow old, I think... is to seek burdens equal to our strength. Yours seem unusually heavy. You were old too soon, weren't you? And he is 'young' too late. It's natural to want what you were denied, Lilian. I hope to help you find it; it isn't too late. But Galle isn't an enviable man. He's desolate, in his own way. I promise."
Marigold	Cecilia eyes Flamel with an oddly sharp wariness. 'Stealth jet' is translating (or mistranslating) some kind of way, but the idea of 'cloaked transport' comes through from context.      "We'll be arriving by a warpgate we happened to map about a day's march from the city. If you can quietly get us in from there, that's ideal. Douglas is sure to be there, and we may not have much hope of sneaking past him, but if we're fast we can keep Galle from catching wind and reinforcing him. Is that within your power?"      She gives him enough of a pause to answer. Then she puts an arm around his shoulders and leans in, slightly tiptoes, forehead-to-forehead.      "That's not an apology to Roy for killing him and making him command anyway. But it's a start. I'd be wringing you out if I didn't think he'd apologize for me doing it."      Marcus, solicited for Roy's parental storytime and unable to delay any longer with other conversations, crouches down and breathes tensely.      "I really don't know what else you want me to tell you, Lord Roy. You know everything of substance." "I feel like I don't know anything at all. Why did Lady Ninian die?" "I told you, she fell ill and..." "If dragons simply 'fell ill', they wouldn't live so long."      The old knight rubs the back of his neck and sighs, fumbling for words for something he's never before himself had to explain. "... This world couldn't sustain her. That's all. I told you, she grew up in an Otherworld where our dragons had hidden away. Fae and Sophia must be adapted to the way things are now. But Elibe has changed since the Scouring. She said it had 'decayed', once. Ninian stayed for your father, even though..."      Even though. They both go quiet, for their own reasons, with a similarly queasy expression. 'Even though.'
Flamel Parsons	"Definitely within my power. Fast and stealthy are a great combo. I can keep the jet nearly invisible to magic, and even make it tough on naked-eye scans! We'll struggle a bit if we get into a dogfight, but we can at least make it..."     Ah! Rage. "Oh, believe me! I'm incredibly sorry!" Flamel beams brightly. "I've made sure to keep my acute remorse response at, well, pretty much the highest level that's healthy." He taps his fingers to his chin. "I've tuned it to make sure I lose no more than two but no less than one and a half hours of sleep on pondering what-ifs and ways to prevent it from happening again. And I'm currently in three speculation levels about the sheer scale of the wrongdoing." And his face is *soooooo* friendly when he nods eagerly. "I've also got my gastric guilt response set to reduce appetite by about half, and to make all food I eat miserably tasteless."     "I'm also making sure to reduce the probability that anyone will forgive me!" He gestures to himself. "By making sure I limit sympathy-compatible suffering expressions. It did *have* to be done, but I'm taking every measure to make sure I don't go without suffering for it, and definitely don't get forgiven for it." He conspicuously... keeps this out of earshot of Roy, and the kids, when he rambles about this.
Aidan Proudpick	"Of course it's amazing. It's mine." There is a small mote in Aidan's compliment. 'I understand this is complex and not a cool trick.' There is a lack of jealousy in his tone that he might have had before. "Beauty of Ash," he repeats, directing his attention to it. Tail flick. Flick flick. His mind whirs around that name, the calculus running in front of his eyes as he applies what he knows about Petra. But then, Aidan is a boy of simple stories. Fire burns into rebirth? He picks up a bowl, banging his spoon against it. There's a guarded tone to that simple repeat. Standing at the edge of a line drawn in the sand, one that has been there for a year now. It's a respectful step back from the line that he doesn't pursue it further. And it gets a start from Aidan as Lilian barks out. "What, Eugenics, what?" He glances over at Lilian, "Yea, I ain't kneeling for that." The bowl fills up with stew. "A good skill! My mistake." He grins, handing the stew to someone else. The perfect insufferable ease of someone who gets to have magic come to him as part of simply being born. Saturate his every cell from childhood. Bowls find their way into the hands of Sophia, then Roy. That same calculus enters Aidan's mind, this time with the thought of magic. Rolling it, bouncing it, hefting the weight. "It kills magic. But not the effects of magic, it didn't set my wind on fire or anything." He grins again, "Hey, look on the bright side, maybe you got something amazing ready to come out of ya."
Khosa	Khosa is satisfied with the reaction she gets from the berry. Still useful enough to be kept, even if it's not as strong on the back of her hand. "We eat inix," she assures Merlinus. "Though hopefully these ones will have a long life pulling wagons, ha ha! But inix is one of the good meats. Kanks..." Khosa makes a face. "You can. If you're desperate. I really don't want to be that desperate. Stick to their honey, or their eggs if you can get them. I'll bring some broy back with me, it's the mead they make out of the honey." Some things are very much the same no matter which world you go to. Khosa accepts the swords, restraining the urge to swing one of them to test its weight and balance. It doesn't really matter - or, rather, it matters, because she can get more if they're better swords, but she can do it when she travels. "This is a fortune in Athas, you know. By any of your standards we're poor, everyone except maybe the sorcerer-kings. Part of why I haven't brought much out, or in, because if only one city has it we're painting a target on our backs." "For trade, I could get by with less. Iron's rare; good iron and steel's rarer. Tyr's got one of the mines that still produces, and we couldn't afford to field our whole army with this stuff." Khosa raps a flat of the sword against the pile of discarded carapace, making the pile rattle. "But I can cover for this many without having to explain where I got it. Piles and stashes get found out in the ruins sometimes." Khosa looks up toward Neon, calling so she can hear: "They'll eat pretty much whatever. Cactus, scrub, rats if they can get 'em. They can forage, and will on the move if you don't push them too fast. Don't need to be too picky with them." Still, hearing they'll have food available is a bit reassuring, even if Khosa isn't quite sure what a farm supply store is going to come up with. Khosa can pick up the tension between Cecilia and Flamel and stays out of it, this time. Instead, she turns back to Roy. "A body's a body," she says. "We all have to live in ours, sure. Most people don't like something or other about theirs. That goes for me too, shapeshifting or not," Khosa adds. "So you're related to dragons," which is still something that sounds weird to Khosa but she pushes through it. "Those weapons can kill you. But they can kill any of us, you know. They might just have to try a little harder with some of us. And some people might dislike you for it, but some people hate anything. In Tyr, where I'm from, most mul were born slaves. Even though we don't have slaves anymore, people still look at me when I speak with the city's voice, and don't always believe it." ... "...I'm probably making it worse," Khosa says, after a pause. "This isn't about me, it's about you. But, I'm just saying, it's the same as it ever was: you'll be judged for things you can't control no matter what and you gotta keep pushing through, with a smile for the people who stick with you. And your mind, your soul - nothing's different about that. Maybe it would've been different if you could talk to her, but maybe it wouldn't be, and there's no way to tell. You just have to move on from here. One foot in front of the other, every day. Don't let anything stop you." Khosa rises, slinging the swords over her shoulder, tied in a rough bundle. "...I should probably start moving if you want me to get the inix sooner rather than later."
Odette Raskins	"We can hope that Roy's case is milder than mine, since Sophia's faded so quickly." "But dragons have magic in their bodies... they need it to live... I think the weapons were made to 'ignite' that...?" After being reminded that Dysnomia had been cut with Durandal once before and getting an interesting theory from Sophia on the nature of the Divine Weapons' wounds, Odette's able to get a far better read than she would have gotten just from looking at the scanner alone. "It... Y-you might have something there. This isn't picking up wounds like.. I mean, there's wounds, but this isn't the same as a conventional burn wound. It's like something got..." Wait. Does disintegration exist as a word in Elibe? "Um... R-removed entirely? Like the magic or the dragon-part, yes, around where..." She gestures at the Maltet fragment, then at Roy's hand. "So if we follow through with that idea, then it might be that touching the Divine Weapon blade really is affecting only the draconic part of you." She fidgets a bit uncomfortably at that idea, but she can't let it bother her too much compared to what it could be doing to Roy. The best she can do is focus on the internal cavity bleeding and lack of iron, and the EMT does exactly that as she rummages around in her bag and takes out a fresh blood bag and a pill bottle. "H-here, Roy. Hold still, and I'll get some new blood in you. And-" She glances at the pill bottle, notices that she got the wrong one, then swaps it out for a bottle of iron pills. "One of these in the morning, another before lunch, and one more before bed. Would you rather I come by with these, or...?" She offers Roy the bottle, but has no qualms about making those stops herself to personally make sure he's taking them on time. She also watches Dysnomia's inventory management and impromptu forgework curiously, at least until the plasma comes out. Odette's not about to risk messing up her eyes, no matter how cool all that stuff she takes out looks. "But he's having two. That's fair." "Hehe... Of course. He's recovering, so he'll need the extra nutrients." Odette confirms for Lilina with a quiet giggle at her apparent concern for the boy. "But candy and snacks are always better when they're shared, so don't hold back on enjoying that with him." Ace's wordless gesture to Roy before stepping away, though, has Odette raising an eyebrow as she watches him go. "Mister Ace...?" She murmurs quietly, having little/no context for what that could possibly be about while understanding, at the very least, that there's some sympathy there from him towards Roy. What could that be for, though?  She's tempted to get up, but she's not about to invade his private moment over there, and her leg is still bothering her too much to move around as quickly as she would otherwise.
Petra Soroka	"And how's the throwing arm?"     Petra takes this suggestion so seriously. *So* seriously. Girls can be brainhacked by acknowledging their present emotional fixations and engaging them in conversation about them.     However, the Beauty of Ash does not have *hands*. Its force output is one thing, but the best way Petra can imagine throwing someone without losing too much momentum is by impaling them on the arm and hoping they slide off at the right time in the throwing arc. She spends a little while thinking about the very narrow overlap between people Lilian would want on a dedicated strike team, and people Petra wouldn't mind impaling.     "... Less than lethal?" Bad answer. "I've made sure to keep my acute remorse response at, well, pretty much the highest level that's healthy."     Hmmm. Hasn't Petra said that before, almost exactly, except for the annoying tone? Or, at least, with a different annoying tone. Observation of Flamel's infuriatingly lame self-flagellation could result in two realizations: either, perhaps, making a show of her own remorse, even if sincerely meant and insistently not meant to purchase goodwill, is a deeply maladaptive behavior that's neither good for herself or for the people she's meant to offer herself up as a tormentable commodity to benefit; or, Flamel is good, actually.     -- Wait, Flamel can't be good. He got Roy killed temporarily! So there must be a third option and Petra won't think about it anymore. "... I didn't think I lived in a world that judged me like this."     Petra lingers by Roy for a bit longer, twisting her revolver cylinder around aimlessly. She casts her eyes around the rest of the camp, looking at each (narratively important) person in turn. "I... don't think there's any difference between you changing and everything around you changing. Since, either way, you end up as the kind of person who gets hurt by the thing that's designed to hurt you."     "But I think, this time it's kind of muddy, right? The world where the Scouring was happening where it was just every human trying to do the best murder to every dragon possible isn't this one. Maltet was getting thrown around, but it was thrown at all of us who are on your side, which isn't even *mostly* dragons. So..."     Petra trails off, and then the pause gets long enough that her momentum completely vanishes. She blinks, and then resets her rhetorical combo. "Uh, I don't know where I was going with that. But, like, I like you more than I like the Eight Generals, and they're dead and their weapons are breaking, and if they came back and decided to hurt you instead of the literal apocalypse warlord king just because of who your mom was, then I'd kill them again myself." "... I just wish I'd ever gotten to talk to my mom about it."     All the energy leaves Petra with a slow sigh. "Yeah..."
Echolalia	Echolalia doesn't eat aidan and turn him into an oak tree today but she does fuck off to go herb hunting! And boy is she not disappointed. She finds numbing berries. She finds beans! She finds moss? Oh thank Ran, moss! What a glorious feast for the senses! And some kind of ... sleeping agent? She takes some samples and puts them in tiny little plastic bags for later study and also nibbles a bit on everything. What a wonderful day! She makes her way back and by the time she gets there, she is covered in red flowers that smell real nice. She makes her way towards ... Odette! She hands the majority of the samples over to her. "I thought about just handing them out myself, but I think you better handle dosages and all that." She explains. "Um, importantly are the--beans, I think. Like, these will help with clotting. I think Roy coudl really benefit from these, okay? Make sure that um, you keep an eye on dosing. I'll be able to grow these myself in about an hour though and--oh and--be careful of the sap, it's yummy but it can really knock you out. I'll bring this yummy nummy moss to Merlinus to add it to the stores..." And then she makes her way over to Merlinus, handing him the majority of the moss. "This may not look it and it's not super tasty, but it's packed full of vitamins. I'm gonna learn to grow more but it might take a few times to get it just right. Nutrition is pretty precise. Probably best to add it with something tasty though."
Lilian Rook	'You're also going to get a pickling setup like you mentioned, plus a trailer--that's a kind of wagon--to hold it all.'     "Resourceful girl." Lilian says mostly to herself, an eyebrow raised as if it were ontologically shocking that a rich girl can call in her resources and favours to actually help people in a pinch. Given the number of other rich girls she knows, it is maybe not quite as ridiculous as it seems to act surprised.     'It did *have* to be done, but I'm taking every measure to make sure I don't go without suffering for it, and definitely don't get forgiven for it.'     "Dear god. He's figured it all out." Lilian sighs. "Now what am I going to nag at him for? He's become downright normal."     'Hehe... Of course. He's recovering, so he'll need the extra nutrients.'     Lilian rolls her eyes, but respects the hustle. "The logic checks out." she says.     '... I didn't think I lived in a world that judged me like this.'     That sobers Lilian back up. The restless shifting of her weight feels to the touch like there's something she wants to say, but whatever it is, she doesn't say it. She doesn't know. It isn't the same. And even if it were, there's nothing to be gained by lunging at it. That sort of blind urge to connect has gotten her in enough trouble already. It's not as if she actually understands when she does, either. She'd be a poseur at best.     "I don't think this world was that world until the moment Zephiel made them necessary again. If it weren't for him, they'd have quietly turned to dust in their caves, and it'd never have mattered at all."     'But since you are... is it that you didn't know who you could tell? I'm sorry.'     "It didn't seem like something there was any point in saying." Lilian shuffles uncomfortably. "And . . . nobody asked."     'It's natural to want what you were denied, Lilian. I hope to help you find it; it isn't too late. But Galle isn't an enviable man. He's desolate, in his own way. I promise.'     "I know . . ." Lilian nearly whispers. "He wants more than anything what he keeps getting in the way of. He won't take what's offered to him because that would cheapen it; he's exhausting every last ounce of his might so that, utterly defeated, he will be forced to take it, and his mind will be at ease, without guilt. He doesn't understand how pathetic that is, nor that he's too strong to insist as he does. He can fight with a lightness like he's already resolved to die, because what he's doing will doom him one way or the other."     Lilian quietly works her teeth against each other. A shiver runs up her spine, then descends through the muscles of her back. Given Lucius can feel both, he can tell that she is subtly timing the breathing to her heartbeats; one to four. "It's a stupid thing to want. 'Getting better' means you're supposed to want to settle down, take responsibility, be there for people, support your communities; and it's supposed to make you happy. I didn't know there was such a thing as too much."
Marigold	Merlinus turns around again, not sure what to expect- and then looks blinkingly baffled when he takes custody of a double-armful of moss from Echo. And then delighted! "Oh, a supplement, is it! Things like that dry well," he declares. "Why don't I put a pinch of it in the stew right now! I'm sure it'll help Lord Roy get back on his feet."      That might be a little optimistic. But it can't hurt!      He shoots a wink to Khosa: "I'll treat them as well as I'm able, don't worry. But I hope you won't be offended if we trade them back in when we can get horses again, either! The best tool is the one your hand's used to, I always say."      "You're right. I think," Roy says to Khosa, a little bit later, but agreeing with her doesn't give him any pleasure. He draws in one leg like he's going to use it to push himself up; then stops, straightens it out, and sighs remembering he can't. The sigh turns into a little cough, which turns into a grimace, hand over his chest.      "I know it isn't that scary. I know it isn't that big of a deal." He'd put it more noble-like if he were feeling better. "I know if I were-- if I were normal, I'd still be almost as dead. I know if I never felt a difference before, I shouldn't feel one now. So there's no reason... to feel so much about it."      He opens his mouth again. It's painfully obvious that he wants to say: "but I still do." Roy, the seventeen-year-old boy, would say that. Lord Roy of Pherae doesn't have the luxury.      "Right. Go get them, Khosa. Thank you." That's what comes out instead.      "That sounds like it might be right," he says after a moment to Odette, holding out his arm for the IV. "It didn't feel like a burn. It felt... I don't know. It didn't feel like anything else." 'Catalyzed', 'cooked off', 'antimatter'- analogies Odette might have access to that Sophia doesn't. Something that turns innate draconic magic into a weapon against itself. "Maybe I'll be all human if this keeps happening," he jokes. More likely he'd just die. "Um, and I'll take the pills. Don't worry."      Petra's "I'd kill them again myself" makes Roy laugh just a tiny bit, emotionally opening him back up. He looks away, as much as he can without twisting his chest, and smiles lamely.      "... Thank you. I mean it." His grateful gaze slides to Lilian, too. "It... means a lot to me, that..." Fumbling for a moment. "You're not from here. Stories like the Scouring don't mean as much to you. I've been hearing them my whole life. It's hard not to feel like I've been 'judged bad'. But... you don't care about any of that. You care more about me. I don't know how to wrap my head around it, but that's special."
Marigold	"There's a 'too much' for everyone, I should think," Lucius says gently to Lilian, "or we'd be finished with this world, and move on like Elimine. It's... easy, I know, to feel as though 'I'm all the way healed, so I should be able to handle anything'. To lose sight of the line between healing and growth, and thus to plunge in too deep; to shoulder things not easily grown into or shed."      His fingers find each knot in her back, without trial-and-error or feeling, but seemingly as a perfect guess. Cool warmth flows out, and they relax like a spring unwinding. His breathing matches hers, then slightly slows, guiding her down too. "If I can ever be a source of lightness, Lilian... please, come to me. Could that soothe you?"      Cecilia is a deeply sweet woman, really, which she hasn't gotten many opportunities to show. You can tell from the way Lilina and Roy both view her devotedly like a third parent. But like the Eckesachs-scar across her face that wrinkles at the edges when she smiles, circumstances have kept her from truly showing her sunny, peachy heart.      Circumstances like this one, Flamel.      Her eyes go big. Then they narrow. Then her face hardens into the slant of a disciplinarian. Then she grips him by the shoulders harder, twists him around, and marches him right up to Lucius.      "Father," she says. "Hm?" "I'm requesting a full dissertation on Eliminean thought about the purpose of guilt." "Oh, very well! And Flamel--" "Will be transcribing it for my review, yes."      She then pivots and walks away. Lucius clears his throat and smiles. "Well. Ah. Really, beginning in even the Saint's earliest works . . ."