The black mage kept her wits about her as she descended, but when her slow fall came to an end in the grass she allowed her muscles to go slack. Had the monster slumped over there might have been cause to fret over a fake-out, but a headlong drop into a convenient pit struck her as a little too tough to recover from. Since the hole seemed to be nothing more than that -a hole- she found herself looking around at the foliage. As if in response to the fall of the malboro, the ominous atmosphere of the forest began to evaporate like morning dew. Fog drifted away, shadows crept back to where they belonged, and fresh air filtered through the trees. “A fell aura somehow linked to the creature,” she murmured. “Its abatement must signify its source's demise.” While once again not the most novel information, it meant that the group would not need to worry about the overgrown vegetable crawling up the pit again.

Artemisia took a deep breath of the sweet air, feeling the adrenaline seep from her body, and sighed in pleasure. Another victory, another tale in her life's story, although the events of this morning would need a great deal of embellishment to qualify as a chapter. She looked over just in time to see Edgar grab the crystal and get zapped, which made her shake her head in wonderment. “Such blissful ignorance may have more dire consequences some day.” Balder went over to help him, for however much that counted since he possessed no healing abilities. Artemisia, meanwhile, crouched over the crystal with her head resting on her hand, and the elbow of that arm on her knee. Though it shared some superficial qualities with aldite, it matched up with no variety she had ever heard of. The others would end up disappointed if they figured she might be able to tell them something about it, but it clearly carried some measure of importance. While no botanist, she felt as though malboros did not typically feature such gems, and the thing showed a visible reaction when the crystal received damage. Still, handling it would be foolhardy, so she left it where it lay.

Standing up, she dusted off her dress. Balder appeared to be very impressed, and he wanted everyone to return to the city. Artemisia could definitely get behind that. “Goodness,” she began, primarily addressing Balder. “Either we make for a far more talented company than first impressions would suggest, or you aggrandized that particular bit of vegetation somewhat. Felled by a pack of uncoordinated greenhorns without so much as a bite wound to show for it...it was rather intimidating for a houseplant.” Idly wondering if the black crystal possessed mutative properties, she fell in behind the others to begin the long, long, long walk back to the guild.

---

Soon after the return, Artemisia was obliged to drag herself from the corner where she had plopped, sweating and exhausted, to take part in the hunt's formal debriefing. Looking like she'd just run a marathon or two, she lay with her upper half sprawled across the meeting table. When Balder placed her new badge beside her, however, she revealed that she harbored enough strength to pick it up and pin it on the right side of her collar before resting again. When a sack of money hit the board, however, she snatched it with remarkable speed. Her plum-colored eyes practically shone as she heard the amount held within. “Oh my, oh my! Goodbye hungry nights and empty mornings, and fare you ill! Hello food fit for a queen!”

Balder seemed more intent on dishing out the newly-minted hunters next duties than letting her enjoy herself for once, however. More monsters like that malboro, was it? And as dangerous. Hopefully that meant they would all be this easy, although Artemisia knew she couldn't count on getting lucky again. “We're already leaving?” she wondered aloud. Did that performance really make them an elite force who weren't needed to solve any other problems around here? The prospect of more walking made her want to bang her head on the table, but somehow being rich was making her feel a bit better. “Well, I suppose I should visit the marketplace. After...after some brief repose.”

While a nap sounded good, she wanted to eat more than anything. Hunger had been gnawing at her since yesterday, which in turn made for a fitful night's sleep. After securing her new coinpurse on her person she made her way out of the hunter's guild and to the nearest tavern, where she ordered a whole dish of food that she took to a secluded corner to eat in peace and quiet. An elegant mage she might be, but Artemisia got tired and famished the same as anyone, and she needed to be her best if she was going to work more miracles.

---

Location:: Ferris Woods, Deep Woods => Alexandria Hunters Guild Headquarters, Meeting Room
Date:: 21st Sun of Ondine
Interactions:: Artemisia, Avaddon, Balder, Edgar, Ianthe, Luna, and Mitra

---

Well then, that was convenient.

Blaike couldn't help but elicit a sigh of relief as his hand continued to glow with bright red, flickering flames, only to be snuffed out as quickly as he clasped his hand. Even with their battle against the Malboro in such a tenebrous place, Blaike slowly began to unravel his hand, this time with smaller embers prancing around as he observed the atmosphere with a careful eye.

Only when he saw the plants begin to unravel and return to a lighter and much more natural state of vegetation was when he began to ease up, especially with a beam of line shining through the thicket upon this gaping hole where the creature fell. Eventually, the small embers flickered and died, wasting away like a Minibro as he noticed one falling to his side, practically rotting.

Blaike relaxed, his much more outwardly austere behavior vanishing the moment he witnessed this all; it felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders as the once daunting atmosphere of the forest declined. With a smug, self-assured grin the moment he was certain there was no other monsters lurking around, he twirled his sword in his hand before sheathing it, all while tipping his back as his cape flowed as a result of his magical wind.

"Quite true due to the phenomenon, but nevertheless, that t'was not a difficult challenge for us; helped that we had quite the skilled mage in this group," he chuckled in response to the other magi's observation, before winking at her with a mischievous grin. "Oh and you as well, Artemesia," he teased with a toothy smirk at the woman before glancing over to the nervous priestess and giving her a much more pleasant smile as he changed up his coy tone for a much more comforting one.

"Looks like you were able to muster up your courage and take the plunge," he gave the girl a soft smile and a light, yet approving sigh, "after all, there can be no courage without fear. Nice work there." While her contribution wasn't as much as the others, at least to him, he wouldn't be the one to claim that.

However, her striking that black crystal did divulge some important information to him, something he would take advantage of in the future, especially since there were no recordings of a Malboro with crystals inside them. Speaking of black crystals.

Just as Blaike was about to check up on the others as he pivoted around, he witnessed something so profusely stupid that it caused the color to drain from his face. "Drop that now! You don't know if it-"

Too late. For all his bluster and serene attitude a couple of seconds ago towards Luna became quickly replaced with a pang of anxiety and worry as his eyes widened and his pupils dilated as he cried out towards the lad. "-sss volatile or not," despite how intense his command was, the damage has been done and he had visibly deflated. Gods, of course Cid's apprentice was just as reckless as him.

Shuffling on over swiftly to the downed lad, Baldur was surprisingly spry for someone who was just knocked out of the fight and injured, and even quicker to comment. Whatever the case was, Blaike, gave the two a cocksure smirk as he held both of his hands out, "Or I could just do this."

Following that statement, the Red Mage murmured something about 'cure' under his breath as his hands began to glow a gentle light, which engulfed both their proctor and the engineer in a soft glow as small twinkles of light formed around their body. In a couple of seconds, most of the injuries incurred, whether through carelessness or a vine whip had all but dissipated.

"Jus' don't forget who healed you both up when you're doing evaluations, alright," he joked with a large grin, warily eyeing the black crystal chunk Edgar had dropped. Part of him wished he could collect a sample, but a part of him couldn't help but worry about the properties it might have on him, especially with his current condition.

"Hah, maybe there's more than meets the eye~." After that comment towards Artemisia, he would offer healing up the rest of the party if any of them were injured before they started the trek back. There was a lot to think about.

---

Blaike flicked the bronze badge up into the air with his thumb as if it were a coin before letting land in his gloved hand as he continued lauding praise to the group, with their oh so great leader soaking it all up. Still, he focused intently on the bronze badge, focusing on it as if it were treasured keepsake and nodded to himself. Now maybe, just maybe he could find away beyond the miasma-laden lands as he pocketed the badge.

Now, the payment. Greasing this group up with a bonus worthy of their success, eh? Well, it was part of the payment as he snatched up his share of the gil before nodding to himself. It was a fair payment. Honest work for 5000 gil, though he didn't look relatively impressed, rather lax about it all as he stuffed the 5000 gil somewhere into his coat and shrugged.

It wasn't until Edgar spoke up about the sample that was on the table. Yes, that. He wasn't surprised and the relative speed of retrieval for this dark crystal; if anything, he was musing to himself about how slow they were this time about gathering this anomalous material with a huge grin on his face.

Still, it was curious that other beasts with black crystals were popping up, making his mind wander on the possibilities of what this material might be, if it wasn't just corrupted Aldite.

Which was his first guess. Regardless, the moment the contracts were distributed, he began reading over his before clicking the roof of his mouth and nodding to himself. Well crap, he was gonna have to report in to be on leave for a while at the labs, unless they had something for him to do up in Belinus. After all, it was as Baldur stated - they could be gone for a while.

Sitting straight up, he murmured the details of the task to himself before storing the parchment with the rest of his gil. As much as Artemisia's idea sounded good, there were more important things he had to tend to at the moment as he glanced over at Ianthe, "Hah, lucky you! Sounds like my type of mission; getting to learn more 'bout these crystals while traveling with a charming girl."

He grinned and winked at Ianthe, "'course, this mission is just as good as well." Sitting up, he glanced over to his other compatriots, but not before his gaze landed on one a familiar dragoon.

"Nice work on the last mission; your skills are sharper than ever Mitra, but more importantly," Blaike stated as he leaned on over, he rubbed the bottom of his chin with his index finger, "it's good to see you again." Yeah, there was that as well. At least they had the down time to talk now without a giant vegetable trying to devour them, as he had a ton of explaining to do as he began to retread the back of his mind over where he would start.

Standing upright he rolled his wrists around in a circle before pointing to the door, "I've got some errands to run, as well as shopping to do to before the morrow; care to join me?" Blaike gave the girl a polite, inviting smile as he stood there, awaiting her answer.

Knowing her, she would probably decline or something, but the Red Mage could only pray she agreed to this excursion. There was so much to catch up on after all and so much he probably had to explain.

---

Of all the fare in all the places he’d been, the food J’torha was consistently most impressed by was fish. Unavailable back home in the Fabul Desert (short of those gristly, spiky sand-dwelling things that were hardly fit to save a starving man), they were new, exotic, and even five years on never ceased to impress. There were endless varieties, some strong in flavour and some mild, some hardly big enough to chew and some the size of caravans (or even ones that lived in shells), and every locale had their own unique ways of preparing them. Lemon, saffron, butter, cayenne, rosemary, onion, even cinnamon once in that outpost in Bellas; some prepared in cream, some in tomato sauce or fried in oil, some simply roasted on planks or skewered with vegetables—the possibilities really were endless. From the first time he’d tried seafood on his first foray out of Fabul, J’torha had fallen in love, developing an awfully discerning palate and sparing no expense for the best each town had to offer.

That is, when it wasn’t flagrantly overpriced.

“I didn't fall off a chocobo carriage on my way into town, madame,” J’torha chastised loudly, leaning one arm on the stall’s canopy beam and earning an incensed look from the woman sitting behind the market stall, displeased either at the negotiation or the fact that the Seeker’s bulky, rust-coloured cloak—which may or may not have been a scrap from a textile vendor artfully wrapped to hide the raw edges—was blocking the goods from view by passerby. “You know as well as I do that fifty gil for a lousy pipira skewer is highway robbery.”

“I told you, the price of paprika went up when the borders closed!” The saleswoman repeated, crossing her arms. “And if they’re so lousy, you can just take your business elsewhere. My prices are non-negotiable.”

Ugh, great, yet another reason to despise this gods-forsaken city. Honestly, who closed their borders just for a little political tension? J’torha didn’t know a lot about these things, but he was pretty sure an invading army wouldn’t re-route themselves to official ports of entry. And now they had overpriced fish.

For a moment, the two were at a stalemate, J’torha’s mismatched eyes boring into the woman’s, searching for any sign of weakness. But the dame was no novice, and it was clear she wasn’t budging; after a long moment J’torha eventually conceded, dropping his head in defeat and heaving a dramatic sigh. “Fine. I’ll take the perch then, thank you kindly.”

The saleswoman was all smiles as J’torha handed over a much more reasonable sum of gil for his purchase, the tension of their exchange dissipating the moment a deal was struck. Such was market culture, the only fight to the death in which both parties could walk away happy; it was one thing that didn’t seem to change no matter how far one wandered. Somewhere off in the back of his head J’torha noted he must have sounded just like his sire arguing like that, but that ridiculous notion was brushed off with an exaggerated roll of the eyes as he finally departed from the stall.

At least not all was lost. While it certainly wasn’t pipira, the perch he’d purchased was nothing to sneeze at, roasted whole on a stick with crispy skin dripping in butter and blackened with spices. The potent aroma was heady and alluring, and while it wasn’t the kick of heat J’torha had been hoping for today, it was still enticing enough to get him eating as he walked.

Of course, therein lay yet another of Alexandria’s glaring flaws. Namely that somehow, some way, there was nowhere to sit! Honestly, if tavern owners were going to get annoyed about a paying customer hunkering down for an hour or three with a pile of food but no ale, and the merchants were going to throw derisive looks and garbage at a man just for peacefully loitering on the streetside, the very least the city could do was build a couple of benches. Eating on the move was what people did when they were fleeing for their lives, and in J’torha’s opinion, that kind of last resort is what it should have remained.

But of course, nothing in Alexandria could be ideal, so J’torha was stuck wandering the city’s marketplace at a snail’s pace, glancing around half-interested at passing stalls as he attacked his meal. The perch never stood a chance against any hungry feline, let alone one of his size and ferocity, so it didn’t take long to reduce the poor thing to a skeleton and complete the disappointing meal with a dragonfruit pulled from his pack. There, he would have preferred his dinner about three times as large and ideally somewhere he could rest a while after - or ooh, even better, shared with a comely female companion - but at least he had something sweet to finish it off with. But what to do now?

Once more he surveyed the market, this time from the opposite end, though he still found little of interest. Food vendors? He’d had enough disappointment for one day. Bauble hawkers? Nothing caught his eye. Weapons shops? He’d never been much for aldite, and any cocky little blacksmith’s apprentice trying to get his hands on sharpening fodder would get a kick between the eyes before laying hands on his chakrams. He supposed he could start looking around for another inn, seeing as his ‘first thing in the morning’ plan had transitioned into ‘once it gets a little warmer’ and then ‘sometime after lunch’, but as a pleasant breeze washed through the market, J’torha found himself disenthused with the idea of heading indoors just yet. What to do…

He openly laughed when it finally came to him, amazed he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Dance, obviously! What else could he do? His first few days in Alexandria had received him well enough, with deep-pocketed crowds enthused by exotic art and people, but he’d been so ragged and antsy trying to get out of the city since the borders closed that he’d gone nearly a week without ringing a single bell. Seriously, this closed-borders business had him all mixed up. He shook his head at himself as he broke off in a jog to a modest square at the end of the market; with dinnertime fast approaching, foot traffic was high, and while he wasn’t really hurting for gil, a few more tossed his way would never go unappreciated.

Filled with new vigour at the very prospect, J’torha bounded into the square, sitting himself down on the edge of a fountain at its centre. From his pack he drew a number of accoutrements; loops of jingling pyrite coins were fastened around his wrists and ankles and strings of bells tied around his waist and tail, and once all was secure he jumped up on the fountain’s edge and cast off his cloak, revealing an open blue vest and sash, each trimmed and adorned in eye-catching gold.

Taking what looked like a black stick in each hand, J’torha slid easily into a starting position, holding still a moment to draw a long breath. The hustle and bustle of the square and nearby market faded into silence; after a moment there was only him and the breeze and the sun on his skin, his heart steadying to beat his own perfect rhythm. One, two, three…

Stillness gave way to movement, arms and legs spinning fluidly as the dancer skipped feather-lightly along the edge of the fountain like a leaf skittering in the wind. A deep calm settled into him, and a sense of tranquility permeated the square. A few eyes were drawn, but not too many just yet, though something of a hush did fall around the fountain. Despite it all, a sense of giddy anticipation built up in J’torha’s chest, each graceful, fluid motion laced with barely-contained energy, a hopeful tension just waiting to be released.

Suddenly, an explosion; the ‘sticks’ in J’torha’s hands each whipped open to reveal brightly coloured, shining silk fans. The eye barely had time to catch them before his body whipped into motion, turning and kicking and flipping like a whirlwind, playing at the edge of the fountain on the precipice of falling off. But that wouldn’t happen; no, to the crowd it looked like the dancer on the ledge rode the very air, body no more than a feather in a hurricane as he whirled about, fans opening and closing in rhythm like the plumes of a magnificent bird. They could feel it now, too; the energy of the square rose to match J’torha’s own, eyes drawn of their own accord to the spectacle at the fountain and spirits raising at the heartening display. What began as a wave of bolstered self-assurance intensified to energy and excitement, passing interest in the demonstration turning to awe. There was no music - no sound aside from the flapping of fans and the jingling of coins and bells to the rhythm of J’torha’s dance - but they didn’t need it; every onlooker could feel the beat, and even if their ears wanted for music, their hearts and minds would rise to fill in the rest.

---

With a contented sigh, Artemisia sank back in her chair. This was no high-brow establishment, the food wasn't anything special, and the furniture was leaning toward shoddy, but right now it felt like heaven. She couldn't remember the last time she felt full. The budget of a traveling sightseer seldom impressed, and fewer people bought her food than one might think, so despite the appearance she groomed of a sophisticated mage, she missed meals with regularity. Looking at her situation realistically, one could be forgiven for labeling the woman a hobo. Now, however, she felt like a queen. And with all the money she raked in from monster hunting, she didn't just need to get by, no; she could afford to spoil herself.

In no kind of rush, Artemisia took her time raking up every last crumb of her meal before draining her cup and heading for the door. Nobody seemed to pay her much mind aside from the usual looks and such, which sat just right with her. If she didn't need anything, the particular attention of strangers spelled nothing but trouble. As she rejoined the bustling throng of folk making their way through the streets, she became aware of some sort of commotion a ways off. A crowd gathered, but there didn't seem to be any sign of violence. Curious, the black mage made sure her coinpurse was well covered before setting a course for the assembly.

Well before she saw the source of the intrigue, Artemisia could hear his sounds and feel the energy. Some manner of wizardry? she wondered, her interest piqued all the more. Bit by bit she worked her way into the crowd, and before long she spotted the source. A whirligig of silks and coins, frolicking upon the precipice of the square's fountain, lighter than air—a dancer was hard at work making grace look easy. A male dancer. Most of the dancers she spotted in the Free Cities had been winsome females, prying coins from the hands of men with lecherous eyes. Now, however, Artemisia found herself hard-pressed to look away. Unlike the hapless commonfolk clustered here, she could sense the magic in the air to an extent and knew there was a little more going on than met the eye. A long as she didn't start feeling inclined to start spilling the contents of her purse over the cobblestones, though, she figured there wasn't much harm. Besides, I came to this city to see the sights. It would be wasteful if I failed to check out all of him—them, rather. She crossed her arms and watched on, clapping when necessary, unaware of Luna's presence.