Explorer of Edregon

Unlike all the other avisul Vin had had the pleasure of interacting with, it was clear the moment he began speaking with this one that Quill had a lot of anger in his heart. For one, the avisul had a near-constant scowl scribbled across his face, made all the more eerie by the needle-like teeth his people had filling their mouths. His long ears couldn’t seem to remain still, always twitching and flicking into a different direction, and he even held his arms down by his side rather than crossing them and enveloping his body with his winged membrane.

Vin might not know the details behind why Quill had fled his fragment, but from how he reacted to Telin’s name, it was clear to him at a glance that the avisul almost certainly had an excellent reason for doing so.

“Look, I don’t know what happened between you and your people,” Vin said, trying to get through to Quill as he decided to try and distance himself from Telin and the other avisul as a whole. “I was just asked to deliver a message, and your people were kind to me, so I wanted to do what I could. We nearly died to the World Eaters, and the avisul were the ones who rescued us.”

Vin was hoping name dropping the World Eaters would ironically calm the twitchy, angry avisul down slightly, and it seemed his hunch was correct. Anyone who witnessed the horrifying, gargantuan size of those monsters living in the darkened depths of the sky fragment and lived to tell the tale about them had experienced the same trauma, and he figured having something like that shared between the two of them would be a good starting point. Just as he’d hoped, Quill’s face morphed from anger and concern to one of surprise as he reevaluated the situation. But before he could say anything, the avisul paused, his brow furrowing as he pressed a finger just below his ear and muttered something.

Then one of the town hall windows shattered as a glimmering crossbow bolt smashed through it, aimed straight for Vin’s chest.

With his divine boon having been used up only a few minutes ago from triggering that explosion outside of town, Vin had been carefully monitoring his surroundings during his entire conversation with Quill. He knew the other two souls were still somewhere within the town hall, so letting his guard down was the last thing he’d been planning to do. That said, reacting to a surprise, clearly magical crossbow bolt was more easily said than done, and Vin knew in an instant he wouldn’t be able to get a spell off in time.

The good news was he didn’t come talk to Quill all on his own.

Vin’s eyes widened as he stared at the gemstone-covered bolt that was frozen in space barely six inches in front of his chest. From this distance, making out the runic carvings covering the bolt and the tiny slivers of gemstone embedded into it was easy.

“…Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?” Vin asked over his shoulder.

“This is serious, Vin, be careful,” Lumel said. She frowned at him even as she kept Dimensional Lockdown in effect on the bolt, holding it suspended in the air. While her spell didn’t work all that well on powerful, living creatures, stopping a simple projectile was child’s play so long as she was prepared for it. “And whatever you do, don’t touch that bolt. I don’t know what those runes do, but I would bet it’s rigged to explode like the traps outside of town.”

“I had the same thought,” Vin muttered, peering more closely at the projectile. Unlike Lumel, who dealt exclusively in spatial magic, Vin actually did have a vague understanding of the runic engravings covering the bolt before him. Runes used to create runic objects were a little bit different from those used in spells and artifacts, almost like a different dialect of the same language. Even so, deciphering these runes was a lot easier than trying to write them himself, and he was able to make out runes that reminded him eerily of his Self Destruct spell, which told him everything he needed to know about their would-be killer.

“Yughe, what the depths?!” Quill shouted from up on the rooftop, his glare back in full force but no longer aimed at Vin. “This isn’t an enemy! He was just trying to deliver a message from my people!”

“Anyone not with us is an enemy!” a shrill voice came from within the town hall, before a goblin wearing darkened goggles and missing half of one of her ears leapt through the shattered window. She was covered from head to toe in pouches and pockets, and grinned as she hurled a handful of glowing spheres their way.

This time, Vin was prepared, and he frowned as he deflected the array of projectiles with a simple Wind Wall. As each sphere touched the ground or the wall of a nearby building, it exploded, sending out a powerful blast of glittering, brilliant light at the same time that blinded him.

“Tremorsight,” Vin muttered as he clenched his watering eyes shut, beginning to grow a little annoyed at the back-to-back surprise attacks. It seemed those darkened goggles allowed the goblin to see through her blinding attack just fine, as she darted to the side, reaching into another pocket and pulling out some sort of rune-covered cube. With that wild grin that had yet to leave her face, she wound up the pitch, and did her best to hurl the cube at them as hard as she could.

Before blinking as the strange cube stopped less than a foot from her hand, Vin having caught the incredibly projected attack easily with a cast of Mage Hand.

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Seeing as the goblin had already tried to blow him up twice, despite not knowing what the cube did, Vin didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about tossing it right back at her.

The goblin let out a yelp of surprise as the cube snapped open, unleashing a tangling array of fabric cords that whipped out and wrapped around her. In an instant, she was all but mummified from the neck down, and she fell to the ground as she lost her balance.

“Can we just talk—” Vin’s attempt at diffusing the situation was cut off by a powerful roar as this time, the entire front half of the town hall exploded outward when a man of pure muscle smashed his way free, sprinting straight at them with steam coming out of his snout.

A minotaur?! Vin thought, recoiling in shock. The one and only minotaur he’d ever crossed paths with had been Drintus, a loud, friendly fellow who had helped them escape the floating library with one of the golems for Alka’s new body a few months back. While he had been a little battle-hungry for Vin’s tastes, the man had been cordial enough, and they certainly wouldn’t have pulled off the heist without him.

This minotaur wasn't quiet the same size as Drintus, but he was still far more muscular than any human. His eyes were filled with rage and death as he swung back with a giant hammer and prepared to smash Vin in like a bug.

“Disorientation!” Lumel called out, causing the minotaur to stumble and alter course, crashing into the building a dozen feet to their right as he lost his whole sense of balance and then some. Having been on the other end of that spell out of sheer curiosity, Vin knew it was just about impossible to try to fight through if one wasn’t expecting it. Having the world inverted and flipped upside down was more than a little jarring.

“Would you two knock it off!” Quill shouted, scowling as he spread his wings and hopped down onto the ground. Vin didn’t miss how the thin membranes connected from his wrists to his sides looked frail and damaged, almost like they’d suffered burns of some sort before Quill lowered his arms and hid them once more. “I told you, they’re not enemies! Stop trying to kill them!”

“They bound Yughe!” the minotaur roared, stumbling out of the smashed-in building on wobbling legs as he used his hammer like a staff to support himself.

“With her own device! Only after she tried to blow them up twice!” Quill argued, narrowing his eyes at the minotaur. “Is this how the two of you react to strangers? How many people have you both killed before now without me knowing?!”

“Nobody who didn’t have it coming!” Yughe called out, still grinning even as she wriggled her body to the side so she could see what was going on. Based on the glowing runes covering the cords binding her, Vin didn’t think she’d be going anywhere any time soon. Wiggling her body back and forth in what Vin assumed was her attempt at a leisurely wave, she grinned at them. “Hello! You are quite strong!”

“And you’re quite smart,” Vin admitted, peering more closely at the crossbow bolt still hovering in front of him. Only now did he notice that the tip had been dulled ahead of time, and as he focused on Beyond the Veil, Vin looked at the runes covering the projectile once more, somehow seeing that the explosion it was set to cause wasn’t one fire, but of sound and force. Getting hit with such an attack would have been incredibly painful, but remarkably less lethal than he’d first thought.

“Stop… making… the world… weird!” the minotaur shouted, continuing to slowly wobble his way toward them, his face turning distinctly green as he did so. Vin briefly wondered both if minotaurs had more than one stomach like a regular cow did, along with how exactly that would affect how they threw up.

“Noctis, stand down!” the goblin called out. “They’re not enemies!”

With a grunt, Noctis did just that, still glaring at them as he stopped moving forward. It seemed Lumel felt like the battle was over as well, as she stopped casting her spell, stepping up to stand beside Vin while she kept her eyes on the trio.

“What is wrong with you two?!” Quill shouted, his glare bouncing back and forth between his companions. “You told me you only fought in self-defense!”

“Anyone capable of getting through my ring of traps should be more than capable of surviving a little test,” Yughe explained, her face angled directly at Vin. He had the feeling she was staring at him quite intensely, but with her dark goggles on, he couldn’t see her eyes at all. At the very least, her wild grin had finally abated somewhat. “Why did you come here? Are you here to loot as well?”

“No! Well, one of my companions is, I can’t argue that… but we were checking to see if anyone managed to survive the trogum tide that swept through here a few weeks back,” Vin explained. “We detected the three of you and decided to come see for ourselves.”

“Trogum…” Yughe muttered, as if testing the word on her tongue. “Scrawny, four-armed bug looking things?”

“That’s them,” Vin nodded. “You saw them?”

“Not us, but some people we spoke with recently,” Quill explained, still glaring quite harshly at his companions. “Refugees from a different town one fragment over. They told us they fled from an army of such beings so dense that they made the ground shake as they ran. We figured an army that large probably ended up hitting the adjacent fragments as well.”

“So there were some survivors,” Lumel whispered, and Vin nodded, his heart leaping at the news that the Rebel Queen hadn’t managed to kill everyone. Survivors meant there was a chance those people could return and try to pick their lives back up where they left them. Maybe not in this fragment, but at least in one of them.

“Then that’s where we’re going next,” Vin decided, wondering what in the world should be done about the trio before him. Even if Yughe’s surprise attacks weren’t quite as lethal as they first seemed, the initial explosives set up around town certainly had been. But before he could think too hard on how he wanted to handle this, Yughe surprised him by managing to wriggle herself into a sitting position, her grin coming back full force as she cocked her head and looked at him almost hungrily.

“…I have a proposition for you. What would you say to bringing us back to your settlement so we can talk to your leader about a potential retainment offer?”