[SE] Stop, thief!

Drunkenness was, in fact, one of Tal's vices. One that he fought with and occasionally succumbed to. His relationship with alcohol was a rocky and complicated one, and deeply personal, but drugs had never interested him in the slightest, and drink was reserved for the safety of civilization and solid ground.

He was more interested in hearing about the stolen item, though Maea's description did have him giving her back a skeptical glance as she paused. "Weird is right," he agreed. "How were you even carryin' somethin' like that around? An' who in their right mind would want t'steal somethin' so awkward?" But at least she wasn't too upset at losing it. It didn't sound like some sort of family heirloom or anything personal like that.

Taking the lead, he now found that he couldn't look behind him without risking losing his footing. He picked a wide root that twisted away to the right with numerous smaller branchings that tangled with more slender roots to either side. His ears were practically twitching while Maea spoke, and he paused to lean down and peer into a hole that opened in one of the larger vertical roots. "Um. Yeah..." he mumbled in response to the list of things that were now beyond her reach. She continued, and he slipped his Goggles into place, squinting at the hole before cautiously using his Dagger to poke around inside. "So, that kinda sucks. Y'seemed pretty at home in th'library back in th'Grounds. What about workin' there? Or at the big library here in Stormbreak? Hail, maybe y'could even build one up from scratch in Torchline?" When nothing tried to bite the blade he pulled it back and then reached in, groping around with a frown. "Or, shit, y'seem t'like travelin' around. What about joinin' up with th'Adventurer's Guild?"

MAEA

"Like I said, it was light as a feather. Got it from a ghost shark - or whale, I don't know exactly what it was - in Hak Etme. Remi and Ronin did most of the work killing it." Though they had also lost a man during the combat; her soft scowl suggested that the artefact perhaps meant more than she wanted to admit.

None of his suggestions were bad, but they didn't quite spark any enthusiasm either. Not until he mentioned the guild. That made her halt, balancing on a raised root with a hand on the wooden wall for support.

"The what now? Never heard of it." Adventuring... the suspicious part of her wanted to dismiss that as reckless hunting for trouble. But on the other hand, was the Loreseekers any better? Still sticking their noses where they didn't belong, following rumors and legend in the hunt for truth... The difference, she supposed, lay in what they did when the adventure was over.

Isn't it lovely, all alone?
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

"Ohhh yeah, one o' th'weird critters," Tal realized, nodding to himself as he relegated all of the item's strangeness to 'magic animal shit.' He scratched his nose briefly before stepping over a transverse root that crossed their path, continuing on until he spotted the intriguing-looking hole lower down.

While Maea considered the implications of an Adventurer's Guild, Tal... went looking for trouble, true to guild form. "Yeah, it's, uh... it's kinda new. Edmund started it. He's an Ancient who just moved t'the Grounds. Young kid, but means well. We've done some investigatin' o'void shit for Torchline's King." Sometimes their adventures were pretty small, but sometimes they were useful. He brightened as his groping fingers closed around something solid and he pulled his hand back out, fingers curled around his find.

"Honestly, it kinda needs a bit more... uh. Structure? Edmund means well, but he's a li'l god-crazy," Tal admitted with a grimace, then remembered who his present company was and shot the pale Ancient a sheepish look. "Uh, no offense t'you or Dygra. He's just... well, not all o' his attention is on th'Guild, it feels like. So it needs a... a lieutenant or someone who can keep it on track."

MAEA

"Hmmm." Her tone was full of meaning, though none clear enough to dicipher. "Chaos is what Dygra is about, isn't it. The opposite of structure and order. I suspect any venture headed by an Ancient is bound to look strange from the outside." And from the inside, too. Maea had net Edmund, but didn't know the whelp well enough to draw any conclusion as to his suitability to lead anything. The problem might lie in a penchant for strong individuality among Dygra's children; it would take equally a strong personality to herd them all in the same direction. Someone like Danta, she supposed.

Pursing her lips, Maea merely watched while Talyson dug through the hollow, ready to haul him out if he found more than he bargained for. "Perhaps I should put in a request for the guild myself... I'll need some brave souls to help me do a bit of research of my own on these voidlings." Flashing him a grin, there wasn't much humor in it; it was juat as dangerous as it sounded.

Isn't it lovely, all alone?
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

"Huh. I, uh... I guess I never thought of it like that," Tal mused. "When y'put it that way, I guess it makes sense that it's a li'l messy." And it didn't really bother him. He was too busy to participate much anyways, and he'd mostly joined to help out Sohalia and Soleil in case they bit off more than they could chew.

He opened his hand peering down at the smooth, cool stone that he held. It was the size of a large chicken egg, roughly oval in shape and polished so that the dim light caught within it, almost seeming to glow in the Grotto's shadows. It was a pale, rose quartz, pretty and not without value, but hardly an expensive treasure worthy of a smuggler. Just how it had gotten into that hole was likely a whole story in its own right, but Tal stopped admiring it to look up at Maea sharply as she grinned at him.

"What kind o'research?" he asked, immediately wary about anyone he knew putting themselves in jaw's-reach of a corrupted critter. He'd seen the purple fyrhund bite Flora and it wasn't something he wanted to see again!

MAEA

Sensible or not, it did make for a complicated life. And while Maea longed for purpose in life, she could only imagine herself steering the rudderless ship for one erratic leader. If that was even the correct way to describe the Hollowed Grounds leadership.

"Well, it doesn't hurt to talk to Edmund," she conceded, eying Tal as he nearly drooled over the crystal he'd pulled from the hole. "Are you going to keep that? Because if so, I think we should start to head back."

The idea of fleeing through these warrens with a pack of angry smugglers at their heels did not sound better than shopping, thank you very much. As for the research... Maea shot her friend a wink. "Nothing too advanced. Why don't I fill you in while we walk..."

The crawling at the back of her neck might be entirely imagined. But then again it might not be. All she knew was that she really wanted back into the sunlight above ground.

Isn't it lovely, all alone?
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

"Yeah, unless you want it?" He looked sheepishly at her boots and then clambered to his feet. He held out his hand with the 'treasure' gleaming darkly within it, the quartz's light dimmed by the shadows around them. "Might go towards a new pair o'boots, at least?" And judging from the dust and dirt on it, it had been there for quite a while. It was unlikely anyone was going to come looking for it now.

Which didn't mean they wouldn't run into smugglers heading to other, more recent caches...

Tal didn't trust that wink. Nope. Not one little bit. He frowned warily as he let Maea lead the way, but he kept his Goggles up and his hand on his Dagger. Maybe there was nothing to be afraid of now that they'd killed the Void Messenger...

But maybe the bird had friends around here somewhere. And Tal didn't want to stick around to meet them, now that the thought had arisen. "Sure. I guess listenin' doesn't hurt," he agreed cautiously but with a wavering curiosity, like someone watching a ship heading towards the rocks and unable to look away.

MAEA

The shook her head with a smile. "No, you keep it. It's worth far more than boots, I would hate to owe you." Favour for favour was one thing, and taking advantage of a friend's luck a whole other beast of a burden. Call it independence or hard headed stubbornness, but Maea preferred to pull her own weight when she had a choice.

Leading the way as they began to search their way back towards the surface, Maea began to list off everything she had discovered about the recent events, from the first meteor strikes and the first void creatures to Starfall and the strange invader who had given Remi such trouble, including the difficulty in healing the infected Fyrhund bite.

"... and so my thought is that it would be a good idea to examine the void infection properly, to see if anything can be discovered that way. It worries me that only the gods can heal void injuries; it makes fighting them off very dangerous, and even more important to find eventual weaknesses."  

Glancing aside at the Messenger, she paused to give him time to process. It was a lot to take in, and Maea had started to understand that the man sometimes needed a moment to gather his thoughts. She did not mind; patiently waiting, she focused on picking paths in the Grotto that angled upward, towards ground level.

Isn't it lovely, all alone?
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

The courier hesitated for a moment, searching Maea's face through the shield of his Goggles. To be sure, he made enough with his business endeavors that he didn't really want for anything these days; not like it'd been when he'd first started out. He didn't need the pretty gem, and she did... but he knew, too, the bitter sting and resentment of charity. He withdrew the treasure with a slow nod of understanding, slipping it into his pouch without trying to change her mind. "Yeah, alright."

Maea had been behind him when they'd stopped, so now she got to lead the way back, and he trailed in her wake, glancing behind them occasionally to make sure they weren't being hunted. He shut up and listened while she talked, occasionally making a noise of surprise as she dropped new information in his lap. He hadn't heard about the Fyrhund bite that wouldn't heal, or Remi's fight with an invader, although he'd been one of the first to investigate the meteor crash site and he'd run into plenty of void-touched shit between then and Starfall.

She wasn't wrong about him needing time, either. When she looked back at him, Tal's face was screwed up in a scowl of deep thought, though instincts honed on the Tundra kept him looking over his shoulder every few steps. "Um. Well. When y'put it like that..." Hearing that his ring wouldn't cleanse the void taint from an injury sent a shudder down his spine and he scowled harder. "...okay, yeah. Maybe th'risks are worth it. Got any ideas on where t'start?"

MAEA

Extending a faint smile when the gravity of the situation sunk in, Maea turned her attention back to the path as she spoke.
"Roughly, yes. First I want to gather all the information our beloved leadership is sitting on and make it public, so people don't start messing with things that can be avoided." Why they had not was anyones guess, and she had a few opinions on it... but those were best saved for the leaders themselves.

"Secondly, the experiment itself; I want to gather some of the infected flora and fauna and put it through some tests. See if they still have ordinary weaknesses towards hunger and thirst, different magic, how the Void spreads - those kinds of things. As safely as possible,."

Which meant as few people involved as possible, and a thought through approach that left nothing to chance.

Isn't it lovely, all alone?
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

Tal nodded slowly in agreement. He was a big fan of not messing with shit that could have been avoided. Even when he didn't mess with stuff like that it seemed to find him anyways, so why go out of his way and make it easier on the universe? Except maybe this was something too important not to fuck around with. Sure, they'd probably find out... but someone had to. And if he was lucky, maybe they'd also find out some answers or a cure or a shield or something.

He pushed a slender tangle of roots out of his face, glaring at them in distaste as they rattled around his hand like the legs of a giant spider and quickly ducked past them. Boreal caroled from below, keeping an eye out for anyone approaching from beneath in a skyboat as she circled lazily along, pacing them but less wary of Tal slipping now that they were heading back and taking the time to do so carefully, instead of racing blindly after a thieving void vulture.

Of course, just bothering the leaders wasn't going to be enough. They were busy enough as it was, rebuilding and fortifying their lands. So it made sense that the really dangerous stuff would have to be done by someone else, when Tal thought about Maea's logic. He couldn't help but sweat at the memory of what some of his previous encounters with the void flowers had done to him: the nightmares, the fear, the hallucinations. "Well, they're definitely weak t'fire," he said slowly. "Boreal's burned some of'em up before. An' they've always gone down after bein' hit with my Dagger. So... I dunno about that lady Remi ran into, but the little non-people stuff, at least, doesn't seem any stronger'n th'originals. Figurin' out how it spreads, though... yeah. That's probably real important."

He frowned, brows pulling together like little stormclouds over his eyes as he considered another avenue. "...Guess we c'n hit th'collegium after this," he said reluctantly. "See if people've been leavin' reports about meetin' with th'void shit. Save ourselves from reinventin' th'ski, maybe." At least they'd only have to look back at the past two seasons of new arrivals, and not try to tackle the whole damn library!

MAEA

The little tidbits Tal dropped were just the kind of information she was hoping to pull out of the leaders, and she told him as much while pushing herself through a tight passage. Still, it certainly had her thoughts churning; what else had been discovered by random encounters, that had not been collected and added to any record?

The lack of organisation was maddening. Before doing any experiments at all, Maea realized she would do well to sort that issue out first and foremost.

As for looking for information in the Collegium? "That's a good idea. I have a few errands to run first, but if there's still time in the day after I'm done, I'll join you. If not, we can just keep in touch by letter."

With only sparse light filtering through the tangled warren of roots, gaguing the time of day was difficult. Fortunately it shouldn't be much further to the surface, and then... well, who knew what would happen after that.

{Fin}

Isn't it lovely, all alone?
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone