With a startled cry, Kerensa's grip slipped from Talwyn's shoulders, and the pair tumbled separately into the hedges and bushes below. Talwyn shut her eyes, sucked in a lungful of humid air, and braced for the thicket's pricking branches.

    The thorns never came. In their place came the blunt, yet controlled, blows of a pair of outstretched arms. "It's okay! I've got you now," Darius said, staggering and shifting Talwyn's weight to comfortable rest between his arms. Though flushed from some unseen swift action, he let a beam of joy light his smile. "That was really something, carrying Kerensa across the gap like that. Have you two done that before?"

    Releasing her held breath, Talwyn ran her hands over her face. "No, but then we've never had to flee after wrecking a gang's hideout before either," she said with a laugh that descended into a resigned sigh. Now on the far side of the warehouse's fence, she looked to the root-lined ground below. A shudder trickled down her spine at the thought of how close she came to feeling its sheet of twigs and pebbles stab into her skin. "Sorry that us rookies are screwing up and slowing you all down."

    Darius nodded his head towards a piece of blasted wood panelling, a wink flying from his eye. "You seem natural enough to me."

    "If you two lovebirds are done squawking..." With Kerensa by their side, Arlo's head rocked along their shoulders, a weary glaze dulling the glare of their incensed eyes. "Can we get moving already? Because you can bet that magically reassembling golems aren't the only crazy things these mercs have stashed around here."

    A loud crash rocked through the carriage house's surviving walls. Rapid steps clattered into the building, their progress interspersed with snatched curses and many, many raised voices. Alarmed, Talwyn fell out of Darius' hold and followed Arlo's lead around the outer wall, stumbling over the rough terrain underfoot.

    Without the spectacular decoration of its streetside façade, the warehouse's rear face lacked much in the way of landmarks. The morning rain had dwindled to a piddling drizzle, allowing the fresh scent of the Esperavida River to curl through the air. A screen of curving palm trees concealed the splashing waters themselves, however, the riverbank obscured by sprightly foliage and thrumming, hovering insectoid residents. Shreds of tired sunlight struggled through the overlapping canopy.

    Then, between Talwyn's exhausted blinks, the thick jungle came to an abrupt stop. Where there had been rising trees and slick, dangling vines, there was but levelled land, its rolling reaches littered with shredded foliage and rotting stumps right to the riverbank. Looming overhead, a reinforced steel platform stuck out like a wing from the warehouse's main building. Ropes and cables strained to steady it against the fierce winds that battered its exposed length, pairs of golden flags emblazoned with Lupate emblems flapping with frantic force. It was a skyship landing dock, and its vast shadow provided ample cover from searching eyes.

    The group scrambled into the dock's shade, and the complex rumbled with scurrying feet and hectic exchanges beside them. Arlo leaned close to the wall and listened to brief scraps of the passing conversations, keeping their voice to a low grumble. "Yep. They've definitely clocked that some shit's gone down," they said as a wince creased through their face. No blood escaped their gut's still-closed wound, yet their free hand clutched at it regardless. "Getting back in for Tangle's going to be real tough."

    At Kerensa's command, the murky darkness swirled into an opaque bubble around the group, an illusory veil against searching eyes. "Don't fret, dear. There's no need for us to go back inside to fetch our Tangle," she said, finding a dryish patch of rugged ground to kneel upon. "Not when I can simply let her know to meet us out here."

    A mutual glance of confusion passed between Darius and Arlo. "You can do that?" the half-elf asked as he crouched by Kerensa's side. "How so?"

    "Trumpet and I, we have a very special connection." Smiling with pride, Kerensa batted her eyelashes at the puzzled bard. She took a deep, centring breath and motioned for the others to step back. "Give me a moment to find my boy, would you?"

    Kerensa lowered her head, her expression tensing with focus. Dark lines circled around her face as she spoke a short incantation, its words recited with instinctual ease. Upon the final syllable, a sudden jerk pulled her spine straight, and a bubbling, lava-like glow flooded through her eyes.

    The necromancer cleared her throat, her voice returning with cheery, full-throated intensity. "Oh, Tangle?"

    "What the hecky, Skellybones? You promised to keep your flappy bone-face shut!" With stunning clarity, Tangle's harsh whispers cleaved through the group's close-knit huddle, as did her confused mutterings afterwards. "Wait. Did you always talk so fancy, Mr Dead Goblin Thingy?"

    It seemed to the ear as if the dryad hid nearby, yet Talwyn had witnessed this trick before. Kerensa's red-hot eyes and the wispy, deep purple glow that emanated from her open palm confirmed that Tangle's voice was not close, but delivered via a skilfully crafted magical projection. Through Kerensa's imp familiar, the party had a direct line to their infiltrating ally.

    A direct line into which Tangle huffed with startling conviction. "Nuh-uh. You can't push the bull into my eyes," she said, her defiance earning a soft snicker from Darius. "That sounded way more like that spooky witch lady. Is she here too? Is she a ghost? Because that would be so cool, but like, why wouldn't she have brought that up earlier, you know? Could've been handy right now."

    "And put my precious Trumpet out of a job? Perish the thought." Kerensa's body relaxed as she settled into the magical connection, her voice's strains easing into a calm, composed comfort. In her other hand, a small, foggy image formed to show the shimmering outline of Tangle's crouched form underneath a low, dark-coloured surface. "Anyway, it's only us. We just wanted to check in. How are things? Are you two playing nice?"

    "Shush!" With lethal finesse, Tangle dropped her invisibility and danced out from beneath what was now evidently a large conference table, slapping her hand over Trumpet's skull. "We're okay, but we're super deep in their loser lair, so keep it down!"

    The last wisps of shadowy fog cleared from the image in Kerensa's hand, an illusory representation of the scene through Trumpet's eyeholes. Unlike the carriage house, the depicted room sat in dormant, deliberately intimate darkness, its solemn slate walls and simple, solid mahogany furnishings illuminated by odd candles sparsely set around the space. The floor lay bare save for a tattered wicker mat by the sole entrance, yet the walls proudly displayed scores of feather-strewn wooden carvings, polished bird skulls, and black steel armaments. Pristine edges and surprisingly intricate markings whispered of an all-consuming commitment to war as tool, as art, as life.

    With a light clearing of her throat, Kerensa spoke out in hushed, snatched syllables. "Apologies. This is my first break-in, and to be honest, it's a lot more frazzling than I anticipated," she said, her exasperated smile cracking through her trance-like expression. The absent-minded flexing of her facial muscles snapped her jaw into a tense lock, one that only resolved with Talwyn's discreet intervention. "Have you had any luck, then? Dug up any secrets? Fought any self-rebuilding guardian golems?"

    "Self-whatting whosawotsits?" Tangle's berry-pink face swelled in the necromancer's spectral palm-image, confusion shining in her sapphire-blue eyes. The bemusement was short-lived, however, as the dryad's natural chipperness bubbled back to her surface. She hopped onto the conference table, her legs kicking out towards Trumpet's hovering form. "I can tell you guys one thing for sure: this place's vibe is weird. There are so many dudes just stomping around the hallways, and they're all super antsy. Like, jumping at their own shadows-level panicky."

    Resting their chin on their hammer's handle, Arlo made an indefinite sound. "Been there."

    Tangle did not react to the dragonborn's aside, instead cocking her head towards the entrance. Faint footsteps slipped by the closed door, yet they continued down the corridor without entering. "Something's got these losers real freaked-out, and thanks to my expert sneaky skills, I think I have a teensy idea what it could be," the dryad continued, whipping a small clutch of papers from the conference table and flapping them before Trumpet's obscured skull. "These guys just came into a load of money. Apparently, this Illusive Lodge dude has hired them to protect this random place in some desert somewhere. I know rich people are weird and all, but I thought this was a little too weird to ignore, you know?"

    Squinting at the waggling documents, Darius stroked his chin until a lamp of recognition struck alight in his eyes. "There's the Cuenquerra Basin a week's ride or so south of the jungle. That may well be where those crates we found are headed," he said with a tap on Talwyn's shoulder. Before the sorcerer could respond, an unseen thread pulled his attention away to the blurred distance behind their shielding sphere. "Illusive Lodge? It couldn't be..."

    Darius drifted away, burrowed in mines of impenetrably deep thought. Tugged by her heartstrings, Talwyn moved to follow, only for the blowback of his emotional upheaval to keep her at bay. There was fear to stir Darius' seas, but there was something else whipping his waters into a tangible tempest, something inaccessible – something pained.

    The shadows continued to shift around the perimeter of Kerensa's image as Talwyn returned her focus, catching sight of a swathe of pristine white in the background. At the head of the central table, a substantial, extravagantly framed oil painting hung high upon the wall, perfectly positioned to bear down on any and all occupants. Its subject was no warrior or battlefield scene, however, but a lone, looming figure.

    They were a woman. Save for long black nails, she was unarmed, though well-served by the steely self-assurance of a power beyond brute weaponry. Her ivory skin shone brighter for the raven-black cloak and dress that cascaded down her body, their sleek cut mirroring the straight flow of shadowy hair from within her close-knit cowl. Along her neck, a collar of sharpened feathers formed the silhouette of a raven's wings, outstretched and vivid enough to take flight. Purple droplets poked through the darkness of her dress, whether from the stone set in her sole ring, the talons of the corvine birds that flanked her, or her powerful, piercing eyes. She stared into the distance in contemplation, regret, longing – it was difficult to discern which, or whether it was all at once and more.

    "Hello?" The rap of Tangle's knuckles against Trumpet's head rattled through the sphere. "This is the part where you guys say 'oh, that's so cool, Tangle! You're so amazing and awesome and we'd be bumbling around like bumblebutts without you'."

    "You're absolutely right. This is truly an excellent find, dear," Kerensa answered as she jolted into awareness. The magma of her loaned vision blocked her own sight, yet guided by the rustling grass beneath their feet, she bowed her head towards her companions regardless. "It's just that, well, we've hit a little snag on our end, and now the whole base is hunting for us while you're still inside. Very inside."

    Contrary to the concern that ferried Kerensa's words through the magical connection, Tangle gleefully kicked her legs out and stifled a laugh behind her hand. "It was Dary's fault, wasn't it? It so was. I totally heard him rattling around from here."

    The dryad's delight, for all its infectious potency, washed over Kerensa's furrowed brow without leaving a mark. "It was more of a collective clusterfuck, if I'm honest," the necromancer said, her following laugh fuelled by discomfort rather than delight. "Whatever the case, we reckoned we'd best regroup and run along. Have you seen a skyship landing platform on your travels?"

    A flicker of thought crossed Tangle's face, then, with a musical sigh, she simply shrugged. "Nope, but something like that must be pretty big, right? It'll be easy-squeezy to find," she said as she hopped off the table, the found documents scrunched in her hand. With a stretch of her arms and a crack of her neck, she vanished from sight once more, a sparkling sheen dusting the space she inhabited. "I'll nab these nabbable papers and swish on out. See you in a tick! Don't get caught, doofuses."

    One springing step was all Tangle managed. As her feet hit the floor, the room's sole door creaked, cracked, and snapped wide open, two figures looming in its frame.