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Songbird and Brandy left the entrance hall and ended up in the kitchen. 

“Hmmm,” Songbird muttered to himself as he tapped the side of his glow jar. The bugs inside, probably tired from the relentless throttling he gave them earlier, flickered for a moment before returning to a more muted output of light. The kitchen was wide and roomy, with chipped stone counters piled with all sorts of dirty pots and dishes- the item hunter turned towards the bunny, expecting more or less a negative reaction from him- where insects crawled out of. Eeew.

“So, uh… Let’s go look at the cupboards,” Since he was taller than Brandy, Song elected to look at the upper shelves although some were too far up for his reach. Cringing, the nobody ran his hand over the dusty wood, only for the tips of his fingers to brush past something hairy.

 He shrieked and careened backwards, and his black hat slipped down his head from the impact when he slammed against the opposite counter. Bright circles pierced the darkness where his hand had been earlier, and there was a hiss before the two points of light disappeared. Songbird realized he had been [i]this[/i] close to losing some fingers.

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Avian stood up and dusted his pants off when he heard voices from the other side of the wall. From where he was, the voice wasn’t loud enough to be coherent, but Jasper looked relatively calm so he assumed that it wasn’t anything he should be worried about. Perhaps that pair of humans that was behind them earlier? Anyway, he decided to approach and caught a few of Inadi’s words.

“Two M’s… Midnight Man? Ha. Too close for comfort. Thank you!” He mulled over the clues and then called out for the boy to hear, only for Jasper to tap him on the arm and present her own evidence. Newspaper clippings… Old and torn at the edges, clearly leafed through frequently by their previous owner.
“Thank you, miss Jasper,” Avian murmured and nodded at the girl before touching the papers. “The one about the Forest of the Ancients seems older, doesn’t it? That’s not a good sign,” He noted out loud, waving the thin papers in the air to show Jasper the difference. “Yes, if he’s the only one who knows where the Stone is, we’ll need him. But the newspaper is too old… Which meant that he had been missing for a very long time now. We may have to accept the fact that he’s dead,” The dragoon winced, but continued, “So I guess our next priority is to find a memento.”

The next clipping caught his eye. “Hooded figures…? Why would they be included in this?” Avian seemed genuinely distressed when he read the publication about the vandalism in the castle. However, he realized that Jasper was watching his face for his reactions and composed himself, giving back the papers before scanning the other ones she hadn’t read. 

“Has your group, by chance, met these ‘hooded figures’ they’ve been talking about?” The soldier breached the topic delicately since she might mistake him for a nosy upstart trying to worm his way into Delirium’s political problems. “What do you think of them?”