[center][h2]Anne Mayer[/h2][h3]??? — Cave Entrance[/h3][/center]
Anne managed to stand firm just long enough for the Herald to disappear from sight. As soon as the woman was gone, she stumbled over to the nearest wall and slumped against it, her breaths deep and haggard. A thin sheen of sweat covered her skin, as though she'd been running laps around the cavern for the last few minutes. Somehow, without knowing any of the context around this situation, she'd stumbled her way through to a nonviolent ending... And on top of being stressed from that, she'd had to maintain a state of battle-readiness for the whole conversation. Broken as she was, even this much effort took its toll on her.

"That's all," she said, her head leaned back and her eyes closed. "I'm beat. If any more Heralds show up, tell them we're not here." Joker was young, and seemed perfectly capable; he could handle the kids for a minute. She needed some time to gather her thoughts, without acting as a human shield for endangered children.

Without being fully conscious of it, she kept on turning the little box over and over in her hand. Intuition told her it was a clue, perhaps the key to unlocking this entire mystery, but the contents had only left her with even more questions than before. Without any recourse, she let out a deep sigh, and cracked open her eyes to look blearily at the others.

"How's Millie? Any sign she might wake up soon?" She phrased it hopefully, for Alvin's sake, but her words concealed the true depths of her worry for the girl. If that Herald woman had really gone and called off her subordinates, then the next step had to be getting the children some proper medical attention.

[@PKMNB0Y][@EchoWolff]