NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ellinor" data-source="post: 5672233" data-attributes="member: 14561">24x02Twiggy took notes as the group made a list of tasks.  To save time, the group split up for the various tasks, and agreed to check in at various times during the day.  Tavi sat down to write the letter to his family.  Everyone else set out to post notices warning people off the bounty, with the aim of investigating their attackers along the way.“Let’s see if we can get everything wrapped up before we have to go find that man Ellisen at sundown,” Mena issued a challenge to the group.  “We don’t want Rose in danger any longer than she has to be.”  I suppose that means a nap is out of the question.  It feels like we haven’t haven’t slept for . . . Acorn paused to do math in his head, and his little eyes fluttered closed . . . forever.It has been a long time, Twiggy comforted the mouse.  Feel free to sleep in my pocket while we post signs around town.###Kormick took the notice from Mena as she returned from the back room of the Questor’s chapter house.  “As we suspected,” she said, “<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-august-25-2011-a-25.html#post5567827" target="_blank">Brother Soburu </a>was only too happy to help.  Said the Questors’ goal was to meet challenges, not draw unneeded attention.  He even signed the notice.”“Your mother did at least one thing right,” Kormick said to Rose, who had been waiting beside him. “She chose Mena as your teacher.  Well-persuaded, Dame Mena.”  Kormick tacked the notice to the wall near the door, and looked around.  Too many of the patrons were staring into their beverages, and too few were staring at the Inquisitors posing the notice.  “You, sir,” Kormick announced, “Yes, you.  The young man in the orange.  Over here.”  The young man in orange stood, looked around doubtfully, and walked over to Kormick.Kormick put his arm around the young man and pointed at the notice.  “Would you please read that in your loudest voice?”“Attention,” the man croaked.“Louder,” said Kormick.  “Start again.”  All eyes were on them, now.“Attention,” the young man said, with more volume, if not confidence.  “The bounty on the girl pictured below—”Kormick motioned toward Rose beside him, as if she were a work of art on display.  Rose bent her knees in an ironic curtsey.“—calls for an illegal attack on an Inquisitor of Cauldron.  This bounty is strictly prohibited and must not be pursued.  Any and all persons pursuing this bounty will be prosecuted to the fullest extent by the Inquisition.”“Whose names are those on the bottom?”  Kormick asked, rhetorically.“Lord Ono, head of the Inquisition, and Brother Soburu, head of the Ehktians.”It looked as if everyone got the message.###So it turns out that “walking out the main gate of the city” is precisely as bad an escape plan as it sounds,  thought Tavi, as he followed a runner back to the House of the Inquisition at about noon.  Apparently, the gate guards had apprehended the man with the glasses early that morning, and it had taken the runner some time to find one of the party to come and question him.  “He confessed,” explained a gate guard, who met Tavi and the runner in the vestibule of the Inquisition, “as soon as we stopped him.”The gate guard was holding the chain of a set of manacles.  Wearing the manacles was . . . not the man with the glasses.  It was a Sovereign man of about 30, wearing the uniform of a gate guard.“So . . . you stopped this man from escaping Cauldron,” Tavi asked the first guard.  “Yes,” replied the manacled one.  “I was trying to leave the city.  You see, I had attacked a group of Inquisitors for money.”Tavi showed them a drawing of the man in glasses, which Nyoko had created for “wanted” posters.  “Is this the man you arrested?”“That’s me,” said the young guard in manacles.The spell would wear off eventually . . . but the man in glasses was, Tavi knew, long gone.  He had, just as he’d said he would, walked right out the front gates of the city, and was deep in the Ketkath by now.###By the time Twiggy felt Acorn stir in her pocket, it was midafternoon, and the group had reconvened to investigate the blonde attacker’s quarters at the Inn of Opulent Luxury.  Hey, this place is much nicer than where we’re staying, said Acorn, as he wriggled his head out of Twiggy’s pocket.And much more expensive, too.  Anyway, our place is just fine.A porter showed them down a richly paneled hallway to Odelette’s room, which was large and sparely decorated with exquisite details.  A very plush bed stood in the middle of the room, and a gorgeous flower arrangement sat on a table beside it.  Odelette had, clearly, left the building.  Although she hadn’t told the proprietors that she was leaving, her belongings were gone, with the exception of a few bits and bobs of wool and stone—spell components, Twiggy assumed—on the table near the bed.  On a divan in the corner lay the thick silk robe that had been provided by the Inn.  Twiggy picked up the robe—as much to feel its softness, as anything else—and noticed that it smelled lovely.Lovely is an understatement, Chelesta.  Ask about that heavenly aroma.  Ask![/i]Twiggy held the robe out for Nyoko to smell.  Nyoko sniffed, thought, and sniffed again.  “I know the scent,” Nyoko said at last.  “It is a massage oil, mixed by the Adepts, and used for elite clients.”Acorn, is there any way you could follow that scent?I’d follow that scent anywhere, Chelesta, Acorn replied, and directed Twiggy toward the room’s edge, and then out to a veranda.  I’d follow it anywhere . . . but it doesn’t go anywhere.  She must have teleported from here.“It’s not quite a dead end,” Nyoko observed.  “Now we know we can ask about her at the Adept House.”###“Let me check,” said the young Adept behind the desk.  Behind him was a rice-paper screen, and behind that was the Adept House spa.  The Adept ran his finger down the page in front of him.  “Odelette, you say?  She’s scheduled for a massage at . . .”The rice-paper screen slid open, and a blonde woman—Odelette—walked out, oblivious to the group’s presence.  She was wearing a towel.  Only a towel.  “I’m ready for my…” she said, trailing off as she looked up and noticed the others. For a moment, it was hard to say who was more surprised.Then Odelette turned around and BOLTED.“Get her!”  Mena yelled.  Nyoko took off, Arden leapt after her, and the rest of the party followed, crashing past the clerk at the desk and into the massage rooms.###Left behind, Mawu opened her leather case and spread it out on the desk of the spa. She took out one of the small needles and examined it closely.  “They are my friends,” she said to the young man behind the desk, indicating the instruments in her case.  “I call this one my ‘gentle inquiry.’”  She put it back gently and picked up a pair of silver pliers.  She could hear the chase, beyond the hallway of the spa, moving into a different part of the Adept house.  As the sound traveled farther and farther away, Mawu could hear a woman’s scream, and a smashing noise.“You’re  . . . not going to chase the light-haired woman?” asked the man.  His voice was shaky.  Their voices are so often shaky, Mawu thought.  “No, I am of more use here, preparing,” she said, “preparing, here with my friends.”  She polished the pliers gently.</blockquote>

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