HokumPocus

The Five Senses - Second Arc (Accepting New Players!)

---

Octavio flexed the fingers of his hand. “What, don’t tell me you fell for such low-grade tricks of mine.” With an unnecessary snap of his fingers a white sheen blanketed his cornea. “Our magic’s smothered, not extinguished, and there’s a lot you can do with the smoke.” The illusion centered on such a small part of his body dissipated with the words.

It was a relief to have Karina of all people stride in. Tayla seemed to be talented at stabbing things until they stopped breathing, his own talents more focused in the verbal arts, so Karina would make an excellent third to round out their extremes, not counting the familiars. She spoke with a different tone of voice, clearly affected by recent events. He couldn’t blame her. In mere moments a petition for help had turned into a fight for their lives.

“Walking in the dark, having the numbers unfavorably against us…” he sighed at Karina’s words. “Just once I’d love for us to be the ones orchestrating the cheap shots first.”

He wiped his knife clean with a bedsheet, no longer interested in its original purpose. Regroup, fight back. She definitely had a military background. “I can improvise the odd parlor trick here or there, but the magic I’m running on is quite tragically as suppressed as everybody else’s. The silver lining is I can reuse the little eye stunt since the ones it worked on are dead.” A dry smile cracked his face. “Like telling the same joke to a different group of friends! You can count on me in that sense, most definitely!”

Another member joined their group, albeit with far less manners. She seemed to consider herself a “good” person, her words painting her as someone attempting to save them. But there was an undercurrent present. One he’d noted with Svephraey and just about every other power-hungry lunatic they’d encountered. Her casual use of the term “pactmaker”, her blasé consideration of just killing them all. Still, at least she was direct about it. Octavio broke into a jog as she left, along with the rest of their ragtag group.

“I suppose we don’t have much of a choice.”

Karina volleyed her own questions first. Her ship of thought was scrutinizing, far-reaching.

“She mentioned shattering it by killing us, to be precise. That leaves us with the unfortunate implication that death is our only way out of this little mess.” He shook his head, then added his own question into the mix. “This escape of yours would be far simpler had you already freed us of these devices. When do you intend to do that, exactly?” The words came out sweet, but their edge wasn’t hidden.

The Five Senses - Second Arc (Accepting New Players!)

---

Song and dance most likely predate language.

Lynx had said something akin to that once. The memory of it smeared with the smashing of metal weapons and shouts. A lump in his throat jostled as he hit the ground in a roll tinged by sleep. As he fixated more on the sensation of it, the odd everyday annoyance striking during battle, it began to dawn on him. His magic was nullified. An entire method of communication and combat, gone. His tongue rolled in his mouth the way someone would grope the stump of a limb that had been chopped off.

The adrenaline of the realization overpowered the fleeting traces of weariness. "Now!" he shouted.

Lynx careened towards Tayla's attacker, claws bared. Rather than connect with their intended target, all twenty hit the ground and scattered like loose nails in a workshop. Octavio watched his familiar buckle and roll and followed the momentum with his own movements. Misfortune surrounded them, sure, but he had two coin flips.

His dagger messily connected with the servant's abdomen, Lynx a blur as he fought to intimidate another male servant that had been stalking behind.

The misfortune intensified the distraction. They could still communicate mentally, at least.

Octavio dug the dagger out and engaged in a scuffle with the servant. Arms and legs intersected in a series of crude grapples and shoves, both winding their movements with care that reached trepidation and ending by crashing them into one another. A single misstep from either would prove fatal. The brief war of attrition ended in Octavio's favor, however, with the man stumbling for a pause just long enough for him to go for a second attack. The way the dagger pierced the servant's skin was a far cry from the precision Octavio had developed throughout his travels, but it got the job done, so to speak. Any sense of victory dissipated with his second foe.

The second male servant, now free of Lynx's flurries, tore the gap and air between them. Octavio wheeled himself to use the dying man as a shield, then pushed the man forward, watching his body morph. Lynx continued his barrage of feints and bites sensing the opening. Despite the teamwork the second servant proved to be a tougher fight, their short swords clashing and streaking near the stumbling soon to be corpse. Octavio made greedy cuts across the man's upper body, and received one across his arm in turn. The sting of pain made him hop backwards. He had to be more careful. His illusion magic... it was smoldered, not extinguished, he realized. He already knew it wouldn't be enough to form a whole person. But just how much did the servants know?

"Rise! My undead servant! Annihilate our prey!"

The dying man's eyes. He coated them in a thin sheen of white. It was entirely useless, but they didn't know that. The man would appear, for the briefest of moments, to be reanimated. Or so that was the plan. The second servant made a move to step back, but he was faster. His dagger scraped across the servant's face, then closed in on his throat. This second opponent too morphed in front of his eyes. Their bodies slumped on the cold floor, entirely changed in their features.

Octavio exhaled loudly, towards both Tayla and Lynx. "That first act of theirs was clever, I'll give them that. Although there's an air of inexperience to them, as if they were actual servants." He remembered having called them amateurs during the tour. "I almost feel bad." He looked down at his dagger and tutted. "Now my sleeping knife is all dirty."

Lynx tensed his front legs the way a man would ready a weapon. "There is no time to rest. We should expect more threats and seek the others."

The Five Senses - Second Arc (Accepting New Players!)

---

Octavio's small step backwards was almost a hop. A quartet of fingers tore the air in front of his nose.

"Projection. Three syllables." His eyes lolled as he confirmed it to be the right number. "They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it's the weakest form of charm. Everyone has a distorted view of the people around them. Your job is to determine and pine for that, not exact similitude. Amateurs." One of the Lord Ru'Tevs swiped at him a second time, once again only missing by a hair.

At a distance was Lynx, observing the rest of the party recover from Tayla's incident the way humans observed primates. The two were approaching the lift at a relaxed pace, but the sudden conversation from her still caught him off-guard.

"Unwanted surly behavior from Octavio should not be a concern. He favors those of a tasteful persuasion."

The familiar turned his head towards the man, and was met with the sight of him critiquing the chameleons. Lynx regretted having spoken. It was so easy for onlookers to view Octavio as the gracious man entertaining a familiar's delusions, Lynx thought, when it was clearly the opposite. Perhaps one day they would cross paths with another psychotic deity, one that would have them swap bodies. The man was far more suited to the life of a feline. He was practically pawing at the metal bars.

"Weirdo. That would be an accurate term." Not that Lynx didn't understand colloquialisms. The familiar simply once lived in a library, and those were places where phrases such as 'curses!' or 'by the gods!' made their appearance more frequently than the four letter word Tayla nearly... graced the party with. Weirdo seemed more interesting than the others he'd heard of. Newer, and possibly more appropriate. An idea struck him. One that would not have occurred to him under normal circumstances.

"I want to know more of this world's... colorful language."

The Five Senses - Second Arc (Accepting New Players!)

---

The surface of the bowl's contents was pierced by a large spoon, and soon a greedy clump of food made its way across the table from one visitor's plate to the other.

"Say ah-"

The lump of mashed peas hung from his outstretched arm, wobbling.

"Idiot."

The glob fell on the table with an undignified splat. Even food wasn't safe.

"Hmph. Suit yourself. Honestly, this constant air of misfortune makes me feel as if I'm being toyed with. We're the rogues of the group, Lynx, we're the ones whose presence slips in with the night wind and sky. Now those very same forces of nature we conceal ourselves with are against us!"

He banged the sanded end of the spoon on the table. It was big and wooden, something a person wouldn't gouge themselves with on accident.

"Steady yourself. You are attracting attention."

The lynx familiar sat on a chair across from Octavio. Unlike his traveling partner, he had no need nor desire to eat, so his eyes rested on Octavio's food with disinterest.

"Sesh the one sitting like a human in public," Octavio retorted. He ate with delicate movements, but didn't swallow before speaking. It brought to mind the attitude of arrogant royalty. "When did that start, anywaysh?"

"You are not the only one undergoing change. I wish to be seen as an equal non-human. It will not be possible depending on the circumstances, although engaging in social behaviors such as attending a tavern could help."

With the admission came the opportunity to mock the familiar. He was right, however. Octavio's life had been a series of acts and masks meant to take the blows in place of whatever his true self was, a concept that extended to his powers. Their new party had come to see Octavio in a more piercing light than anyone had, barring a particular old friend. What Lynx was doing in front of him felt similar. The others had accepted Octavio's role within the group, so he met Lynx's declaration with a silent acceptance.

"Well... we still don't have a halfway decent proposal for how we're going to convince that man." His voice lowered. "He's neither an arrogant fool nor a woman looking for love, so this isn't exactly within our direct line of work."

"Tidy the spoon."

"Come again?"

"I said to tidy it. Place it along the side of your plate. Straighten your back after."

He hesitated, but did as he was told.

"Perhaps the nobility traveling with us will not be enough. Perhaps we need another. One who wants their grace to be visible."

A familiar wry smile crackled along the corners of Octavio's mouth. "A return to form amidst change."

The Five Senses - Second Arc (Accepting New Players!)

Octavio Grayeye

Rough art I did of him post Arc 1

Male.



26



Sight.



Octavio was abandoned by his mother at an orphanage near a college for bards. It was during this time in his childhood when he began to take after them and see them as his idols. He dabbled in everything related to the world of entertainment before settling into the role of a lute player, out of being criticised repeatedly for his at the time cynical personality, one that developed from growing up in a competitive and emotionless environment.

As he grew older he held a grudge against the rich and the eager way in which they wasted resources on attempting to impress each other. Initially he began with petty thievery, but as the years went by he slowly began to fine tune his charisma in order to take a more direct course of action. He is now what one would call a "gold digger", attempting to approach and woo older socialites with the help of his above average appearance and a stolen and luxurious familiar.



Octavio, at first glance, is a man who revels in all things dramatic. From the things he says to the way that he says them everything is romanticized and exaggerated to the point where reality becomes interchangeable with fiction. He is a womanizer of sorts and will not turn down the opportunity to “charm” the opposite sex should it present itself. Underneath this extreme personality is a less dramatic and more grounded individual. He is still a talkative extrovert, albeit one with more restraint.

He is charismatic, swift, and typically tends to know less than he lets on. In combat his familiar takes on a support role rather than directly engaging targets, while Octavio himself makes up in speed what he lacks in physical strength.



He admires perfumes and colognes for the aesthetic qualities in their colors and containers. His sense of taste and smell are both poor and he envies those who are able to enjoy pleasant scents or foods to their fullest. He is also fond of paintings.

His lynx familiar is never used in combat. They argue frequently.



Homosexual.



Octavio´s past experiences in music are red herring for his true abilities in sight based magic. His tendency to attempt to charm and swindle those wealthier than him are supported through the illusion based nature of summoning magic. His familiar is a flashy silver lynx who is used in helping his owner blend in during his attempts to infiltrate high society rather than combat.

The lynx belonged to a duchess as a mistreated ornamental pet. His metal glass was stolen by Octavio and he now finds himself accompanying the rogue through various shenanigans. The lynx has been given countless pseudonyms and is simply called Lynx when not in front of targets. Lynx is brooding, stable, and quiet, a direct contrast to his owner´s personality. He puts up with Octavio´s lifestyle only because he slightly prefers it to his previous owner´s.

Octavio has a relatively strong mental fortitude and can resist magical manipulation attempts better than most.



Octavio has a hard time acting seriously and will normally offend and confuse level headed members of the working class. He has a toxic view on human relationships due to his upbringing and will emotionally shut out anyone who attempts to crack his shell.

Even with the support of lesser familiars in combat Octavio is far from being the best fighter. He is suited to fighting magicians or opponents in stealth situations but suffers when fighting anyone wearing armor.

A small and light leather bag, a short sword and a dagger, cologne, two earrings meant for standard combat summons, expensive wine that he refuses to admit the origins of.

The Five Senses

---

Small hands protected with rags stretched towards the fire, as close as they could handle a heat that pierced snow and cold and bone. To the left and right of him were other hands, even smaller, jostling against one another alongside chattering. It was only when a ruddy man in suspenders entered the courtyard that they stopped shoving. Over a dozen faces turned to meet his, one clad in a smile that seemed to personally meet every one of them.

He cupped a hand around his mouth. "Newes' of the playwrights! Newes' of the playwrights right 'ere!"

The man flicked through a motley stack of papers with a gloved thumb, taking a seat by one of the iron wrought benches at the edges. Within moments a flurry of children cut through the snowflakes to converge on him, most sitting on top of others or on the weathered stone ground when the handful of spaces were gone. Their shouts and laughter fell around the man in a jumble of noise.

"Alright! Silence!"

The fire crackled behind them.

"Osric's been scribin' away real hard for this one. Took'em a good eight tries to get it right. And oh boy, did he ever." He separated the papers into smaller stacks. The oldest received theirs first. "If you can't read, ask someone to help. Start off with your finger, say it out loud, it's the season for that sort of thinkin', it is." He stood back up with some effort, handing the last of the papers to the smaller children. They scampered off back into their old groups, and he let out a sigh. Until he turned around.

Another child. Or adolescent, he was nearing that age. Easily the oldest out of the group, hands in his pockets, trudging back to the fire.

"You. You're Ophelia's brother, correct?"

The boy's shoulders sagged upwards in a shrug. "We arrived at the home at the same time, so that's just what we call each other." The word had no weight to him nor any of them for that matter. Even their names were assigned to them on the spot. His dark eyes rose to meet the man's, and to the boy's surprise his smile was gone. In its place was a tight-lipped frown that was almost unsettling in between rosy cheeks and and a graying beard.

"Tell 'er she's not welcome scribin' anymore. Waste of perfectly good paper, it is. We'll find some'un else." And with that, the man left, leather boots gnashing against snow and stone.

The boy said nothing, not that he was able to do anything else. He resumed his gait, approaching a pair of girls that were audibly struggling to tell some of the letters apart. His index finger joined theirs.

REISINGER ORPHANAGE PRESENTS

THE TRAGEDIE OF MACBETH

***

"It is still callous to not share your whereabouts. For a representative of that being to be caught engaging in petty thievery would be disastrous."

Octavio ignored the familiar and opened another set of drawers, finding no apparel worth caring about. He plucked a gaudy strip of cloth and draped it to the wooden mannequin next to him, life-sized and held together through metal rods. It was an effortful piece of craftmanship. "You just have to think about it. The weather's getting colder and the clothes in this vacation villa are clearly for sunnier temperatures. We could live here for most of the year if we were clever about it," He chuckled. He gazed at their reflections from the mirror in center of the room, only noticing the enormous blur on his left when it was too late.

***

The girl wiped at the swollen bags under her eyes with one hand.

"I made it better, you know. But they don't see it that way."

They were the same age, wearing similar sets of rags. The two sat on a bench far away from the fire. Various sheets of paper were spread across their laps, all of them covered in thick blots of oil. Above and around the blots were sentences of different sizes and coherence, with arrows that meant to show an order but only disorganized the words further.

"The ending changed completely." There was no tone to his voice.

"It did." A short sniffle interrupted. "It's such a sad story. I mean, all this betrayal, madness, violence, and they die at the end so tragically. I don't want to tell stories like that, Julius." There's another pause to her words, and for a moment she's lost in thought. "You're still Julius, right?"

The boy nods. "It's the seventh name I've taken on. It feels lucky to hold on to it." For as long as they've known each other, however, he knows she's never parted from hers. He gathered the papers and organized them to the best of his ability, finally handing them to her. "Sometimes life is a tragedy. No point in ignoring that, or making any strange changes to a play. He stood up and left the courtyard.

***

Hands protected by rags searched for heat, and found it around Octavio's neck. In what felt like moments he was grappled by a pair of arms, struggling to find a way out. Lynx tossed his own body towards the assailant in a rough maneuver meant to trip them up. For a moment nothing could be heard save for a desperate man's increasingly harsh grunts, but a new sound joined the scuffle. The wooden mannequin, now unhooked from its display pole, slamming wooden nubs for feet and hands against floor and foe.

After a handful of strained breaths Octavio's heel found purchase on the ledge of a drawer. With one last wheeze he drove the weight of his body on it and wheeled upwards, nearly leaving his body completely horizontal until gravity fought back. But it had been a part of his plan, and the four crashed to the ground in a pile of limbs from using himself as a human domino. The chaos gave him the opportunity to slip free from the attacker's grasp. A dagger made its way from a hidden compartment in Octavio's clothing to his hand to the gap in the opponent's armor that would have revealed a neck. It wasn't until the hilt clanged against metal that his eyes widened.

"There's nothing underneath."

He scrambled upwards and backwards, his back pressing against a wall.

"An illusion."

"...a knight illusion whose armor made no noise. The only person I've met who uses a style of illusions such as that..."

His gaze remained on the empty suit of armor, locked in the grapple of the wooden mannequin illusion pinned beneath it.

"Ophelia".

The Five Senses

---

Every illusion of Octavio's, every piece coiled around his fingers in the game of blood and flesh, was gnarled to nothingness in a near instant. It made his blood go cold, in a wasteland already polluted with frost and blood. He thought of kings without kingdoms and sailors whose ships had ruptured. Men that were already dead, who clung to the ragged breaths that were all they had left in the world. The world around him stopped, and his thoughts froze with it.

Stranger. Being. He had the face of a man, but it felt incorrect to consider him one. At one point Octavio envied him, even saw him as a rival that could be bested. Those had been the thoughts of a stupid man. As the... entity took interest in Lynx, he could feel the cold crawl towards the center of his heart.

Taunting words. Ones uttered by those with the power. The control. Just as the noblemen he hated, the politicians, the mercenaries, all those he wanted that feeling of control from besting. But he could feel ice in his throat where words would be, a frozen expression of grief where one of confidence would have to take center stage. He wasn't the lead again. It felt as if he'd never be.

One piece left. Himself. Lynx was in no state to fight, instead fleeing with the other familiars. The king was supposedly the most important piece in chess, able to move anywhere, yet signalling the loss of the game when captured. But when Octavio attempted to move himself, he found no way to escape the storm of tentacles that overtook him. A struggle, thrashing, sinking. Tentacles wrapping around other tentacles, anywhere they could sense empty space to contaminate. It was worse than the last time, as the tentacles had greedily dug around his abdomen, denying him of even his final breaths. Checkmate.

...Check. A third player. One that wasn't bound to timing their turns. One that wasn't bound to white and black squares, white and black morality. The way the entity spoke truly made Octavio feel like a piece, one listening to an actual player. Octavio remained silent for the most part, eyes trained on the thing as it continued it's fanfare. He had no experience dealing with the supernatural. It irritated him, almost. When he finally spoke the words jutted out without much concern for formality. It was gifting star adhesives.

"Do not wish to fashion yourself as a god, and yet you say you lost access to your godly power. You're allowed to call yourself whatever you desire," he said, judgmental of the word "Bud" and the entity's newfound love for it, "but you're a former god, is what you've so indirectly implied."

He suppressed every ounce of pain and discomfort imaginable as he stood, feeling it pound through over a dozen and a half areas of his body. It wasn't entirely successful, and with a pained grimace he knew it would give the being brand new material to work with. "I would thank you, but this isn't so much a favor as it is a transaction. We've been performing our end of this odd bargain, and I suppose you've assisted us through some of the more dangerous moments. It was a close call particularly now. Don't you think it'd be wiser to facilitate things for us? It'd be a win-win for this... transaction we've been conducting." Whatever this former god was in actuality, he'd likely never know. But the being had shown more of his hand, and Octavio found himself reacting predictably as a man moments from death encountering great power. It was ironic, he realized. The same thoughts that led to the insight obliterating men. He still hadn't taken a single step from his spot.

Check.

***

Lynx's body arose one limp paw at a time, until he was upright and more or less lucid enough to stand. He recognized Akai, but it took a moment for the thoughts to solidify. Words were even slower.

"Gah. What a mess."

The Five Senses

---

With the heart's destruction came a faint trace of hope, and what to Octavio was a misstep in their opponent's game. The seed's roar was an admission of weakness, a sign that, no matter how viscerally repulsive and fantastical, it was a thing that could die. He'd wanted to joke about it, and he was sure he would've, had he not still been surrounded by danger and supernatural bodily fluids.

Soldiers. Tw- Air! Air!

Another limitation of their new code, he discovered. It didn't account for situations in which points of interest were no longer on the same altitude as Octavio and were in fact being dragged by tendrils. He intervened late, through a single soldier and multiple robotic, tactical hacks. Octavio didn't even have time to curse at himself before the next threat came into view.

He couldn't affect the battlefield in the same spread out way a heat construct or a wall of ice could, so he emphasized the opposite. Illusions that targeted tendrils individually, the less conspicuous ones that could have gone undetected. It had been easier thought than done, as many tried to strike Octavio. He weaved and rolled out of harm's way, albeit slower, bogged by the multitasking. A larger tendril scrabbled across his shoulder bone and nearly found purchase, before his dagger could put a stop to it. Two smaller ones darted for his shins and missed by inches.

Sidestepping a third tendril, he silently agreed with Karina. His own personal efforts to deal with the tentacles would be nothing but ineffective pruning over the long-term. They all needed to be more aggressive.

"I could perhaps try something riskier. Having many illusions rush towards different hearts, something to spread this digusting creature's attention around." He wiped a brow and hoped that what had oozed off was mostly from his own body.

The Five Senses

---

Two, six o'clock.

A guard caught in battle whipped around and slashed at a cultist behind him. There was no reasonable way he could have seen the foe approaching behind him, nor strike back with such speed.

One, three o'clock.

Another guard took advantage of a scuffle to dig his polearm into a cultist's ribs. The man's movements were uncanny, a rabid sprint towards his sudden target that had more in common with a dancing puppet than a human's organic movements.

As Octavio's experiences in battle grew against his will, he found himself refining what it meant to fight effectively. He assumed a more administrative role now, developing a steadier hand when it came to directing his illusions. No longer simple disposable peons, he was beginning to see the use in preserving them, using them to surveil each other and take advantage of every blind spot and moment of weakness he could carve out with their eyes.

Two, 4 o'clock, form flank.

From the thick of battle a familiar in the shape of a lynx hopped from body to body, mentally sending commands to the man who was technically, begrudgingly, his owner. No sooner than he finished the thought a guard joined a loose group of people who were uncertain about whether or not to engage. His appearance and charge bolstered them into doing the same, flanking the opponent before anyone changed their mind.

Octavio himself took to the shadows. It was an overwhelming amount of information and stimuli, a deluge of sight and sensation. More than once he found himself nearly curling into a ball so he could focus entirely on the illusions. It was a strange, new way of battling. Gone was the scrappy rogue that threw everything at an opponent until it stopped moving. In his place was a more tired man, one who had more in common with a shepherd or a puppeteer.

"Get up!" shouted one of his guards to a younger man whose entire body shook. He yanked the hammer the man had been wielding and handed him a short sword. "Something like that's too heavy for you to use right. Take this and aim for the wounded." The young man nodded with a twitch and took off.

Hmph. Employment of social skills. Excellent work taking notice of that boy.

Th...anks. Octavio's eyes slammed shut. Too much happening, too much being taken in. For every piece on the board that had been meddled with two more required his influence.

---

The board had shifted. The pieces that hadn't been trampled followed suit at the mercy of it. Rot and death followed and entrapped them within its squares, depraved simulacra of plant and flesh enveloping land and choking air. It was as if a nightmare had torn through the veil of the mind and began to devour the world around it. There was no storybook or grimoire in existence that neared this... being's description. It was the board and it was the piece, the king and every pawn held together through bone, bark, and wet ligament. And then the tendrils struck.

One, three o'clock! Two, four and seven o'clock! One, three! Three, nine!

With a slam towards the ground Octavio commanded his illusions to dodge their newest threat, only just avoiding collision with one aimed towards him. His new strategies were still tentative, still prone to failings, and now Lynx was struggling to keep up verbally. In the past they'd taken advantage of his illusions and the blank space they occupied to the sightless. It'd be harder to employ that strategy here, he knew. Space was in short supply and tendrils could break through at any given moment. He needed something more aggressive.

He hacked at the tendril with a calm precision that surprised him. He needed to employ a level of self-preservation he'd never felt before.

"I've got the numbers to try a couple of tricks with. Perhaps with an even spread we can see where this rancid thing's vulnerabilities lie." Chres had his own suggestions, more on the defensive side. "I'll distract if distracting's what we need, though it'd be best to pair it with some solid firepower. Pairing up an attacker with an illusion to counter any surprise tendrils."

Then Týfurkh mentioned a bomb.

"Good luck." A bead of sweat trailed down his forehead. He couldn't tell whether it was because the word triggered a sudden rush of adrenaline within him, or whether it had been caused by their fleshy surroundings. He positioned himself and his illusions far away from the man, forming a quick formation in which they could cover each other's backs. It looked humorous from any perspective other than a bird's eye view, but he wasn't thinking as an individual body anymore.

"Cover!"

The game board. Once again, it shifted.

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

---

Alex flipped through his own notes with a quiet sort of shame that adults had to keep to themselves. Seele's own discoveries and strategies had revealed quite a few spots in his ideas, and he found himself coming to terms with a pang of self-consciousness that seemed out of place for a grown-up. Ironically, one of his primary motivations had been to conduct research in a way that avoided any sort of tunnel vision or incomplete conclusions, and now he'd realized he was headed for a similar outcome if nothing were to change. He had been too focused on the human element rather than the logistics involved in travel routes and locations. His former guild had chastised him for that often. He was a people person who preferred talking it out in contrast to the more pen and paper approach his brother and the rest had favored.

"Still good." He muttered, updating his notes with Seele's findings. "We can... still do my thingy. Good to have a lot of perspectives." He could combine them too. Interviews conducted with an emphasis on the shady hotspots, possible witnesses that didn't show up in registries but inhabited the same areas as the disappeared, there was a lot of information to play with in front of him, and a lot of good moves to make.

A disagreement had sparked at some point, one which only escalated and later advanced outside. It worried him, but so did the mission at hand. The two would duke it out, the pain would register, and then they'd forget about it. Guys did that all the time. Alex wasn't thrilled at the prospect of using Seele like fishing bait, but it was the fast and punchy thing to do, and it seemed to him that they were already late to the trail. Their shouting eventually became lost within the noise of the tavern, and he went back to muttering to his notes.

"We can do it." He bit his tongue as he underlined a particularly confusing passage. The fighters would fight, the talkers would talk, the awkward ranger would figure something out within his labyrinth of scribbles.

Whoever was orchestrating this mess had a particular interest in wayfarers that had a harder time fighting back, to summarize their findings. In other words, they didn't want someone fighting back. That was a bad outcome for them, a condition an all-powerful force wouldn't be sporting. It was what galvanized Alex the most. He knew if you wanted to beat up a rogue or stealthy guy in a videogame, you wanted to take them on directly, where they're at their weakest. With the element of surprise propelling a head-on strike, he was confident things would be in their favor. They also had, for a lack of a better term that didn't sound psychopathic, a second shot. Artemis was fine with being goat in a dinosaur enclosure number two if things got to that point and Seele hadn't died. He brushed a stray hair back. He'd be number three, he silently decided, if he were able to find a way to pass off as a support character.

"Everyone's gonna be fine. We've been holding on, we can really do it."