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She answered a bit drowsily, "No, not injured." Luck seemed to run odd courses here.
After blinking a few times she started disentangling the vines, by hand. She was coming to her senses more quickly than before, because she had not attempted any manipulation this time, but she'd had quite enough for one morning.
Better get it out of there before it starts panicking again.
"Letting it loose?" Ice asked before beginning to help. (It wasn't altogether stating the obvious, since she might just want to turn it over or something.)
It was clucking a lot, although not struggling as violently as he'd expected.
Sylvie nodded. "Unless you have other plans."
"Can't keep it vined down forever," he replied with a smile.
"'s what I thought."
The griffin started wriggling out of the rest of its cocoon.
"Did you manage to find anything?" Suitov asked again, watching it find its feet.
Sylvie sat back. "Yes. It eats seeds and berries, worms, insects, lizards and mice."
Something was odd about the animal. Oh, yes. It should be more scared.
"All to the good. And regarding magic traces?"
"Oh. Yes." She watched the chickogryph, which was now pecking around some paces off. "There was active magic, but I couldn't check if it was artificial or natural."
"Ah. Interesting." He observed the animal a few moments longer, then "Did you sedate it somehow? It seems very calm."
"No, just stuffed its head under its wing. I guess either it has a very short memory, or it's used to humans."
"Hmm..." Suitov approached the animal and managed to lay a hand on its neck before it moved away. "So it seems. Somehow I am less impressed by this daring capture of Weft's."
Sylvie blinked, considering to tell him it had apparently been Sebastian who dropped that branch on both of them. "I don't know what happened, maybe there was more to it." She shrugged. It was not her habit to spread embarrassing stories.
Suitov didn't much like to see animals put through needless torment. Call it a character flaw of his. "All right. If it's tame, that raises some questions about how it got here and whether anybody will be missing it; although I doubt there's much we can do on that score, other than possibly keeping it in case someone comes looking. That aside, it does seem able to fend for itself. I wonder what would happen if we left it alone?" Yes, he was thinking aloud.
Sylvie answered without thinking, "Depends... if it runs into Weft..." She flinched guiltily. "Well, the last thing he said was something like he'd leave it alone unless it seemed dangerous, so that's probably nothing to worry about."
----
co-op post brought to you by you-know-who ;)
"How unusual." He looked at her for a second or two. "Weft usually tells the truth. Tell me, do you always seek out people you've just been told are possibly armed and dangerous? Merely out of interest."
The younger mage looked blank for a moment, then blanched slightly as she realised what Suitov was talking about. "I... guess I didn't catch the name properly the first time."
She did remember getting a bit carried away and getting in Weft's way even seeing he was armed. Better not mention that.
Sometimes I am an idiot, she thought, sighing.
"Oh, that's understandable. But all I was going to say was that the inn and gardens are neutral ground where fighting is prohibited. Nobody ought to trouble you there, not lethally.
"In fact I was partway through setting up some perimeter wards, if you're interested in that kind of thing."
She was for at least two reasons, and smiled, grateful for the diversion.
"Wards against what exactly?"
The griffin having disappeared into the undergrowth, there seemed to be no reason to stay here right now. Sylvie picked up the ribbon and got up.
----
Meanwhile at the Inn...
A rectangular hole appeared on the inside of the main room wall, and someone half crawled, half fell through it, possibly expecting it to be on ground level rather than a metre above it.
The grey-clad figure - call it a boy or a young man, depending on when you think people grow up - looked around with hasty movements, eyes roughly the size of soup plates, getting nothing but a general impression of antique furniture, and got up.
It should not have worked, but if it worked, it should have taken me out on the street, not wherever -
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw just a solid, if ridiculously rustic and old-fashioned, wall. At least none of the thugs who'd been after him; that was a slight relief.
He started turning around to find ot where he was. Since the first group he saw, to put it mildly, caught his attention, his impression of the room was again, rather sketchy.
What the hell they are green and there is a two-headed lizard with wings on the table that's not statue it just moved aaaaaah!
Completely unaware he was repeating "what the hell" over and over out loud, he stumbled a step or two and would probably have fallen over if he hadn't backed into the wall.
Serpentine more or less kicked the door open, but he did so with a certain politeness he had learned after moving down to live with the rest of these accursed landbound people. The rest of of him slipped in, one wing first as he entered the inn sideways, squirming (ho ho ho) his way through the opening.
Once inside, the furclad bluewinged person gave his wings a mighty stretch -- and froze, looking around to see if there was a kitten lurking somewhere. When there wasn't, he gave his topknot a tug and looked around again, his brain telling him there really was something weird going on.
Oh. The little two-headed thing.
And someone trying to melt into the wall.
It was a little hilarious, and he bared his sharp canines in a display of his amusement. "Need help there, kid?" he called over, scratching his scarred cheek with a gloved hand.
Grey's head snapped around when his hearing finally got through to him with something on the lines of "door! someone coming!"
The sight of Serpentine froze him. There were several thoughts going through his head; one went "those wings can't be fake, the way they move"; most of the others went "aaaaaaah!".
The winged one showing teeth and saying something incomprehensible got some reaction; unfortunately there was a conflict between the signals "get out (through the door)" and "get away from that!", leading to the lad falling over again, this time backwards.
Whimpering, he started kicking his legs and crawling backwards on his elbows.
He hadn't quite been expecting that. It showed. Serpentine, a short scarred man built like a brickwall with wings, blinked his nearly black eyes a few times and looked positively baffled. "Hello?" he said, staying put as if he was in no hurry anywhere - and he wasn't, actually.
He would have stood still, but the severed tip of his ear was itching again, so he stood still and rubbed it, wondering about this kid's clothes. They looked a bit posh. Sucky choice of colour, but nobody asked him.
Grey stopped when the back of his head hit the next wall. To his right there was some heavy furniture blocking his view and way. The way his thoughts were running, looking for an explanation, that did not even register.
There had to be an explanation for this. Yes!
He screwed his eyes shut and lifted a declamatory index finger, still holding on to the marker he'd used before things went this crazy, and proclaimed his conclusion to the world at large.
"This. Is not. Happening."
He'd surely gotten hit over the head or with some kind of anaesthetic and was dreaming or hallucinating the whole thing.
Unfortunatley that winged thing was still there and looking at him when he opened his eyes again. Grey curled up - knees pulled up, arms folded on top, head bowed over them so his face was hidden - muttering half-thoughts under his breath.
Nico the goblin, unfortunately, found the whole situation hilarious and chose to share this with the rest of the room in the form of a laugh fairly impressive for someone his size. "Oh boy, we've got a live one here," he said in Montuone trollish.
Ayu-Asra, having landed on the table, was drawing interest from one of the trolls. The man was, however, too polite to poke him.
Suitov brightened further after sparing the departing animal a last glance. A chance to ramble was a welcome thing indeed.
"I don't know if you noticed on your way in, but these few acres of land are very strangely connected. Although the boundaries are indistinct, they seem to touch on many different places, different planets, all at once. I've been thinking of it as a crossroads between worlds." He took a breath. "This inn is only one part of the region. The rest is owned by various other parties. But I'm taking steps to declare it legally neutral - that's why the use of deadly force is prohibited in the grounds, for example - and one of the requirements is that the perimeter be protected in a certain way.
"The wards themselves are fairly simple devices to weed out anything coming here with the wrong intentions. They're not foolproof, of course, nor will they stop someone who's had a horrendous day and merely wants to murder an apple brandy."
He realised he'd left his copy of Heigh's indoors, but he probably wasn't going to need to refer to the manual for anything anyway.
Serp gave the trolls an evaluating look, but as had been the case for the last few decades of his life, he felt no reason to pick a fight just out of curiosity. And they didn't seem too hostile. Yet. Not that it really mattered. The winged person crossed his arms and waited, one foot tapping a rhythm. He wasn't going to move, but he wasn't going to just watch either.
Despite his past few decades of life, he still ached for fights occasionally, and he wouldn't have said no had this one turned out that way.
The dragon flinched away from Nico's loud laughter, which brought him nearer to a troll watching him. He split his attention, one head watching the goblin warily, the other the troll. The latter head gave a faint jingling noise.
Grey, meanwhile, held still.
That crossroads aspect might explain why she'd ended up here instead of where she wanted to go. Not that that mistake had been all bad.
"On what basis does the deterring work? Thought-triggers are outside my school, but I know they are possible in a different one. Seeding emotions would fit in that field." She shrugged. "But I guess yours is a different school altogether."
"My idea is that it will prevent the place being found at all. I thought it would be the easiest approach, given that finding the way here in the first place is usually a matter of stumbling upon it. I've spent some time trying to analyse the boundary mechanics around here and really haven't got anywhere towards an explanation, but I think I can make a varistor-ward work, at least.
"The thought trigger components aren't my work, though." He didn't want to take credit for someone else's spellwriting. "Speaking of schools, I don't belong to any one discipline. It comes of being self-taught and something of a butterfly." His tone was cheerful and self-deprecating as per the typical Applestone sense of humour.
The grizzled troll warrior leaned a little way back from the dragon, which had just made a rather strange noise. He wasn't used to lizards at all; from what little he knew, he had had some idea that they could only hiss.
"Calm down, Nicolyo," he said.
The two brothers next to him were still engaged in wife talk, occasionally sparing a look for the rest of the room. They were used to weirder situations.
"Seriously though, kid, are you all right?" the goblin Nico asked the person on the floor, using Interworld Common this time. (The man's habit of addressing everyone bigger than him in diminuitive language had only got worse as he'd aged.)
"That's very rare where I'm from. Manipulating matter or mind are two fundamentally different things, and each takes a lot of time to learn, so most who learn one keep to that field."
They were making their way back to the Inn, but slowly.
"So the ward would not influence the unwanted guest directly, but would just cut them off from whatever pulls them here?" She took the comment about the trigger being someone else's work to mean there would be another mage instating it.
The loud critter having shifted its attention elsewhere, Ayu-Asra concentrated mostly on the curious green one. The dragon was slightly confused, but not so much he considered him edible. However, since the big critter was already drawing back, he'd do this properly. He spread his wings slightly and bristled the spikes along his spine, then simultaneously gave a loud jay's screech and took a sudden step towards the troll.
Grey looked up automatically, albeit slowly, when Nico addressed him. He took a look at the goblin, then stared right through him, head leaning back against the wall, a look of misery etched in his face.
"God, why can I not just wake up." He spoke quite clearly, and very clearly not Interworld Common.
"Hey," Lottir grumbled at the dragon and swatted at it... with his hand, that is, and only as much force as you'd apply when tapping the nose of a too-curious cat. (It had abruptly begun to remind him of his daughters' talking-bird. Vindictive little thing that had been.)
"Can't understand you, boyo," Nico-the-goblin announced to the room at large. His sight fell on Serpentine again. "I don't suppose you can, eh?" The lug certainly didn't look particularly on the ball. Maybe he'd be better off asking the dragon.
"Yes. I prefer a noninvasive approach. Not to mention that, if it failed and the target noticed, he probably wouldn't be happy to find his thoughts being messed with. Or hers."
More to the point, Suitov wasn't any good at it. Magic, roughly defined as force manipulation, and psionics, mental, were completely different. So far as he knew, it wasn't possible to build something to affect thought at a distance and in advance - though one day he'd try.
One day. Right after he finished his monograph on goblin weather workings, made a study of unicorn feet, found time to sit for that portrait (bah), cleared out his library again... well, make that before the portrait.
Ayu-Asra dodged. The flexible necks snaked around and sunk two sets of teeth into Lottir's hand.
There was a pause as Sylvie thought over what she had just heard.
From things she'd seen before, she could tell he could influence matter, he said he didn't belong to one school only, and that last statement had to mean he could build a ward that influences thoughts. So he was versed on psionics, which included empathy and telepathy. You can't influence what yo don't perceive.
Or could you?
"Was the structure immersion I explained earlier really new to you?"
Jaina had been in the kitchen for quite some time. She sat crosslegged on the floor, utterly fascinated by the ceramic containers that held marketed beverages here.
Well ... mostly her fascination lay with a single bottle of Djew.
A familiar cadence seemed to cross her ears, so she pulled herself to her feet (Djew swishing precariously all the while, but barely spilling) and went searching for its source. This led her to the barroom.
"Hey there," she called out in IWC, then in English. In the latter tongue, she added, "Someone's a long way from home."
"Gaaaah!" Lottir contributed, thoroughly disheartened.
"Not a new idea, at least the way you explain it. Our healers do something that sounds very similar. None of the rest of us can, though."
She was delightfully wrong about his specialities, which would probably mean some embarrassed laughter later on whenever they realised what different wavelengths they'd been inhabiting.