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Post by demikara on Nov 14, 2020 21:23:35 GMT -6
Molly looked it over carefully, then figured so long as she didn't die, she could light an emergency beacon and be just fine. She smiled to the dwarf. "I'm going to check this out. I'll be back shortly." The two were connected after all. More than a little curious, though knowing it was not, perhaps, the wisest of choices, Molly set off down the causeway. This was interesting. She might go missing doing this though. That would be inconvenient. She'd have to endeavor to be careful. She kept her hands free, just in case she needed to defend herself as she walked to the new building. It wasn't the building she had thought it would be. But it may lead to the fae realm none-the-less and that would be a boon as far as she was concerned, even if it did mean she'd have to keep a careful eye on the time dilation again.
It wouldn't do to go missing for a month or more after all. So she'd have to be quick, if this did lead to the fae realm.
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 14, 2020 23:34:07 GMT -6
As she crossed the threshold onto the solid ground the floor creaked in a slight sag for a sharp squeak of re-alignment as if that reality needed a moment to breathe her existence in. The dark permeated everything beyond the bounds of the dwarf's lantern but for weak sputters of yellow forming on distant walls. Cylindrical lumps on one wall of covered causeways clinked more grids on their surface then a spark-humm of feeble sodium-vapor light. In an instant, light rewrote the sandstone as glass and brass. That familiar yellow pall cast on everything and gleamed on more from falling of metal pips in the air. As Molly went occasionally flashes in time with thumping of giant gear teeth mills ripples in the ocean of brick and ivy wall then sloshes gaps into order. Time moved consistently onward in the predictable if complex movements of sound across the field of clockwork dark.
In such a pattern the flash of gunfire broke its stillness. An orientation of causeways that used her walls as floor shows flashes far below. Men standing on her vertical walls far below flitting flashlights at swaying forms. Shortly echoes of Spanish alerts then gunfire on the air. Long beams in the dark nearby them originate from causeways to pound at a hulking form trying tearing its way through the tangle of stairs. Tear its way upward for her or forward to them. As missed shots lance through the dark they lit long brass chains connected to spears vanishing deeper in. A glisten of long red fibrous sheets they'd been jammed into grew deeper but not that they dug further but that the tide of red muscle rose around them.
Unlike the continuous assemblage of those causeways below hers, the orientation she stood on waited in some slower consideration. Constructions shot forward toward her endpoint in some intertwined evasion of the two sets. Stairwells elevating around platforms and causeways in a different orientation than themselves. Even as the larger whole started to fold new wells to the ivy-brick walls with their own segmented orientation. Dead eyes found it a confusion of non-linear paths very much made by those no more alive than what often escaped the egress. All to ensure later recapture.
That pondering isolation left her path to the building quite clear in comparison. No faint slack-jawed forms wander her path as they did the other platforms. The lumbering hungry gait of the feral undead as furious animals unable to understand how to get to where Molly was. Though a slam and scrabble onto the roof of the shadow of a real building said something different. Hooves of a female form, the delicate half-haired ones of a faun, in sobbing torn between hope, despondence, and confusion in the dark scrabbling to make their way down to the light of the opposing platform.
It was the misery of a voice that differentiated the two hooved legs dangling in front of the intended door she approached, "It has to be. Has to be. I just want to go home. Let me go home."
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Post by demikara on Nov 15, 2020 16:29:53 GMT -6
Molly cast a shield at the sound of gunfire, then hesitated as she placed it. Not here. She watched the scene for a moment, then continued on. She let the shield fall, though she kept a spell ready at the tip of her fingers. The voice though, that warranted investigating. "Hello? What's home when its in bed?" In other words, where was he from. Or she. Molly couldn't quite place the voice. Whoever it was, well. It was either a trap or someone was stuck here in this interesting place. It was not quite the In Between, but it was certainly not on a regular plane at all, much less the one she had come from. Hopefully she'd be able to get back.
If worst came to worst, she had an emergency beacon and she well knew her tattoo had tracker runes as part of it. She wasn't too worried about being lost. It was more a matter of being safe than anything else.
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 15, 2020 17:05:53 GMT -6
Hands that needed to grip at the roof instead froze at the presence of another voice then scrambled with a yelp to clatter hind end in front of the door. The faun's clothes tattered, clawed, and soiled at least gave decency to the feminine fae body with lightly white-spotted hooved legs scrabbling to back away. The unreflected sodium light under a causeway some distance above left barely any light against harsh shadows on her terrified features. A faint bright blue dripped down her cheeks as the faun stared back at the voice in the dark too terrified to have heard what Molly said.
Her voice came in fae with an accent common to those of the wilds, "Don't take me back, don't take me back. Even Pondfell is better than here!"
A halting sob of begging by the terrified as the blue tears soaked down the fine hair of her humanoid face, "I didn't harm humans! The Unseelie threw me in! I swear on my name!"
That particular small forest grove sacked and burnt by those of cruel disposition in the recent past, at least to fae estimation of time, where a few residents went missing and their bodies never found. Breaking their gate was one thing of particular malice easily discovered. Damaging one to the point of inner chaos of its designs then throwing beings in before it failed was a vile action that condemned victims to the in-between. One more difficult to know it happened at all. Things in the in-between were often predators but occasionally the fate of such living flotsam would be the mixed kindness of living to fall into a new reality before they starved.
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Post by demikara on Nov 15, 2020 17:15:21 GMT -6
Molly cast a light spell and offered a gentle smile. A faun? A very lost faun by the sound of it. "Hello? I'm not going to take you anywhere you don't want to go." Hopefully the other could see her now though. Swearing on your name was serious business. "You may call me Molly. What can I call you?" Whoever this was, was apparently a victim of the Unseelie, though she'd love to know how the Unseelie accessed the in between and who she had to kill to keep them from coming here. The Unseelie couldn't be allowed access here. "I don't know where Pondfell is. I'm from Balakhowa, though my apprenticeship is in Limia." If the other recognized the small villages she'd be suitably impressed. "There aren't any faun nearby those as far as I know." If the unseelie threw her in somewhere, she was likely from near the border. The problem being, of course, that the border was no small thing.
This one still had spots. That meant she was still young, didn't it? Molly thought that's what it meant at least. Older faun didn't have spots.
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 15, 2020 18:06:40 GMT -6
The pale light covered the faun's face that tried but failed to smile. Cobalt colored tears drained from her eyes though from one now a hole where only a faint pupil remained. A scarred handprint from some undead's withering agency was weakly healed over by a fae barely skin and bones. One of her horns sported the splintered bone of one broken off with the telltale flat of a desperate head butt.
She stood up with the shaking taut muscles of one just below fleeing in a blind panic to quaver at Molly, "Call Mossbriar for me. I've never been out of Pondfell it's not safe in the deep forest."
Two thin hands grabbed at her chest as reality saw fit to acknowledge a thing by her interaction with it. A brass barbed spear rammed through it with the gleaming spirit chain on the other end leading up and into the dark. The faun looked upward toward the long chain whose hook she held in both hands. As she let go its reality fell away from clear sight in the indeterminate locale. It seemed to inspire a wry smile and tears of joy.
A mantra that bore the rhythm of long-repetition as she looked longingly at the door then back to Molly, "It's still my name. It's still my name. One that's Molly, can you take me back to Fae? Anywhere! Please!"
It was more a mantra to hold a tattered mind together but had a grain of truth to it. The minders of this particular space proved more flexible on this side of the bulwark. Though a wailing echo of dragon's tongue from behind Molly screamed that this too applied to others like her. Though the number of hungry shadows looming on disconnected catwalks thinned as undead creatures went to ground to evade their own predators. Scavengers sensing a battle of distraction had been lost.
A guttural dragon tongue interrupted with hollow echoes of clanking gears and loud brass chains as servitors drag a threat somewhere away, "Man-things! Man-things condemn me again. I will be free in time! You will all burn!"
Panic well entered the Faun sobbed and wailed while furiously juddering the handle of the shadow-side for the room Molly had targeted. Doing much the same in the real with echoed sobs through the door. Only despite a hand growing slick with blue, the door did not open for a faun not ever invited to enter. The great machine a very particular thing of order followed strictures to sate the fae lands but according to its own law, here. That the handle moved at all certainly was because she still had her name.
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Post by demikara on Nov 15, 2020 18:17:01 GMT -6
That was definitely concerning. Molly looked to the door and sighed. "I'll do my best." This place gave her the heebie jeebies. She held up the key to the door and turned it. "Stay close Mossbriar. This may not work. If it doesn't, I'll take you through the other end of the walkway. It won't be fae, but it won't be here either." Which was an improvement. Staying in the In Between wasn't something that should be done. It wasn't a place for settling. At least the other didn't seem overly hungry. Molly didn't have any snacks on her. She kept those in the car.
It was always good to have a snack with you as MCU after all. Magic ate energy which meant you needed to eat to feed your magic. "Please open." she requested to the door, just in case that helped. There was no need to worry though. Mossbriar was clearly of the fae, which meant she could always activate her beacon if she needed to. It should still work here.
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 15, 2020 18:34:25 GMT -6
Mossbriar jumped as Molly approached the door but her breathing settled by pressing her body to the outside of the building. As Molly grabbed the door handle pinpricks of light appear in all directions as something emerged from the walls and corridors. The faun's head just nodded and stared at those lights and their occasional burning lance of magic.
As the door opened by Molly's effort the world turned faster, the faint breeze of fresh air that brought to mind this place's empty scent of nothing at all. That this place supported life at all the act of significant amounts of effort to give shape and form to the in-between. The gears turn faster with faint shining show pelting softly even if the two of them seemed to move no faster at all. The door opened where Molly meant it to though the strain on their platform by the effort to keep this door open caused the platform to shudder. Mossbriar didn't wait for Molly to open the door all the way before her bone-thin body squirms through the gap. Desperate to find something to hide under.
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Post by demikara on Nov 19, 2020 20:31:42 GMT -6
The closest thing to the door that Mossbriar could dart under would be the kitchen table and it’s four chairs. Smooth, though covered in a myriad of thin cuts, the table had seen better days, obviously the target of a family that used it well for a good deal more than eating at. It was well used and well loved, and currently several books were open on it, and paper and a fountain pen and inkwell were there ready to take notes from the books. The chairs were hard wood as well, worn smooth by the passage of time and by heavy use. They were built to be sturdy more than anything else, built to be practical in a family that had children. There was nothing particularly delicate in the main room of the house at all. Against the back wall of the main room was a large fireplace, the embers of a fire there now, though embers were all they were. A heavy pot hung over the fireplace, and next to the fireplace was the opening of a stone oven, the clay door closed to keep any heat in. It wasn’t used as often as it could be, but they could afford to buy their bread and it saved time versus making it. As far as Xander was concerned, the cost of bread was more than worth it. A garlic knot, a smaller pot, a pan and a few cooking implants were on a counter next to the oven, along with a partially eaten loaf of bread. There was a wooden cabinet, painted a light blue, against the wall to the right of the fireplace. Nearby, several closed baskets sat. Mossbrier would probably recognize the cupboard as the fae equivalent to a fridge. Small hands had painted childish flowers at the bottom. Beside the fridge door was a closed door, a sign pinned to it that firmly declared this to be ‘Pwyll’s Room’ and in larger letters read ‘Molly KEEP OUT.’ Molly closed the door behind her and the door to her home appeared instead. On either side of this door were two large windows, shutters open to let in plenty of light and air. On the final wall of the house, opposite the fridge, there were two doors. One door was unlabeled, but the other had painted flowers around the edges and a sign was neatly labeled on the door. ‘No Boys Allowed. But especially Pwyll!’ This sign was a good deal more inclusive, given Molly was the only girl who had ever lived in the house. Xander and Alex were bachelors, who shared the final room. The decision had been made one Pwyll hit puberty that the kids shouldn’t share a room, and so Xander and Alex would double up.
Molly smiled as she took everything in. “I wasn’t sure that would work, given the instability! I don’t think I want to try it again though. I suppose I’ll need to for a ride back. Welcome to my home Mossbrier, in the fae realm. My brother and uncle are probably in the fields now, but my master should be nearby.” He tended to work closer to the house. Either way, she knew a spell to cast to find him. She wasn’t the only one with a tracker in her tattoo after all, and everyone knew the tracking spell to find those connected to them. And her master was certainly connected to her, written into the tattoo itself. The fae woman looked around, and opened the door, this time without the key. “Come on. We should check the barn first. He may be out there.” He was probably somewhere nearby. And more importantly, he could get Mossbrier home to her own family. Family was important after all. And now Molly had a way to visit her family more often!
The Jinhai were definitely interesting people. She decided she liked them.
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 19, 2020 22:02:05 GMT -6
The darting brown eye and its nearly hollow companion leaned out from the table she'd climbed under. There'd been so much hiding. So much running. The warmth of the fae lands made her cry more even as her legs started to tingle as they rose from numbness. Nearly hollow eye wept more than just by blue tears like the other one did as she squinted at the food and sniffed. There was finally something in the air! Even with a stomach remembering how empty it was still had other ideas as she lurched and looked away from it.
Mossbriar looked away from the bread with a queasy tone and squinted just the eye missing part of its substance, "I could hear the metal squeals turning too fast. Now it's gone but the light makes my eye hurt."
Though she sways on both hooves and stumbles a bit stands hunched over and absently rubbing her forearms. Not from cold per se though in much the same instinctual defense against numbness. A tentative step forward to follow kept her feet though still wrapped her hands about her torso. Caught between elated glances at the hearth and the fridge and casting worried glances at dark corners and the other doors.
She alternately approached the open door then backed away a step, "I used to like the open. Is it safe?"
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Post by demikara on Nov 20, 2020 9:22:30 GMT -6
"Sure. We're pretty far from the border here. Where I used to live with my parents was right on the border though." It had been pretty dangerous, but that was life for you. She waited patiently for Mossbrier just outside the front door. "Xander can get you home pretty easily." She promised cheerfully. The outside was open, and the sun was bright above. Ther were green hills as far as the eye could see, broken up only by a dirt path and three building. Fencing, mostly hedgerows, but a few thick stone walls by the road, such as it was, surrounded the house. There was a barn just down hill, wooden and with a thatched roof. It was larger than the house itself, which was a fairly small thing, with wattle and daub walls, but larger windows with cheerfully painted red shutters. The barn was also painted red and she led the way to it. Unlike much of the place, the fencing around the walls was wooden, made of plain boards forming an x-shape between each post. It was clearly meant to keep in larger animals, rather than anything small enough to get through it. Molly had caught more than one winter lamb escaping from the fenced in area.
There was a third building on the way, another wattle and daub building with a thick thatched roof. Just in case, Molly peered in the smaller building. Nothing but hay for the sheep here, and a few sacks of grain so they could have flour when they needed it. Though of course that meant a trip to the mill first. The actual flour was kept in the house, and they didn't tend to have a lot, given they bought their bread. Mostly, they sold the flour to Pwyll's parents. The barn was large and the door were open. The inside was painted a bright white and there were a few stalls. One large one, meant for the hseep during the winter, and three smaller ones, for the horses and the cow, who were no doubt somewhere in the field behind the barn. There was no telling which field the sheep were in. Pwyll would be with them, so she could find it if she needed to, but that was about that.
Inside the barn was a tall man, mucking out one of the smaller stalls. Molly's face lit up as she saw the white haired man and she ran forwards. "Xander!" This was her mentor. He was taller than most, with bright purple eyes and dressed for the work, in older clothes where it didn't matter if they got dirty. She threw her arms around him and he returned the hug instictively.
"Molly. What are you doing here? Did they finally remove the binding?" He looked up and saw Mossbrier and gave her a smile. "And who's your friend?"
"I was given a work around by the Jinhai. It's unstable, so I probably shouldn't use it often, but I was testing it when I came here. And this is Mossbrier. I found her in an unusual section of the In Between." She let go of her mentor to make the introduction and gave Mossbrier a bright smile. "Mossbrier, this is Xander, my master. He'll take good care of you, I'm sure of it."
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 20, 2020 16:11:38 GMT -6
Mossbriar looked over at the endless hills with a smile stood up straighter though paranoia started peering out of her eyes in darting glances at the horizon in all direction. Even in the light certain aspects of the dark places she'd been sunk deep roots. The soft hoof falls follow with just the occasional stumble as her hands went to her stomach in another wave of nausea through closed eyes and smiled as the warm feeling of the sun spread over her formerly numb face. Like the color of life spread more than the warmth it did help her smile even if still forced.
Memories of home helped her fend off having to remember where she'd been though hope was reluctant to come to her, "I miss the smell of the tall trees but your fields are just as tall as they go to the horizon. We shape our homes in the tall roots and your little quilted roots raise to the sky!"
Mossbriar took her hands to her side in a try to be polite at the new company in spite of furtive glances that still roamed around darker insides or paths to run away. With a surefooted pace of one who doesn't trust the ground they're walking on, plus the rising pangs of nausea, the broken-horned Faun with one incomplete eye ambles up behind Molly while using her for cover. Rubbing one forearm with another the numbness came and went with a tingle of the peachfuzz along each arm.
The eyes tracked as they ought but the one with an iris among a dark blue hole squints quite a bit, "Is that what the star-men are called? When they saw me they turned away. The other things..."
She didn't finish the memory as her composure pushed out her nausea. In a jerk then crouch to her knees on the grass heaved onto the ground. What came out wasn't anything that had a rightful place among the humors of a faun. A striated slime in variations of blue and lumps of toothy metal streamed as it slowed. A rough pile of bronze gears among it as the fluid splattered into grass finally settles. The cobalt colored lubricant bore a scent of brimstone and ozone that she wiped with pull of her tattered clothing and sat backward while hugging her thin hooved legs.
"I'm sorry. I don't feel good. My mouth is fuzzy now.", Said Mossbriar's tiny voice though now the glances at them had the two rightful eyes the faun's face deserved.
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Post by demikara on Nov 20, 2020 17:20:33 GMT -6
"Woah!" Xander came out of the stall and bent down. "Molly, contamination ward around...whatever it is our guest just threw up. Mossbrier, I'm going to have some question for you, but first let's get you some ginger tea, to help with your stomach. If you ate anything at all, where you were, you're going to be sick for awhile." Eating things from the In Between was not suggested. It tended to make you incredibly sick, and he wasn't surprised she was ill now. Whatever she ate though, it must have effected her eye. "I'm going to have someone come by to look you over. She's a specialist for people who go into where you were. Molly, go get Pwyll. He's in the eastern field. We'll need someone to run to get the doctor."
"Yes sir!" Molly cast a quarantine ward around the mess and took off running searching for Pwyll. Xander helped Mossbrier up and helped her back to the house, setting her down at the table and pulling out a teapot.
"The In Between, where you were, is a scary place Mossbrier. Do you know how you got there?" He wasn't quite sure how old she was. He didn't know how satyrs aged. She didn't look young enough to be a new Ratatoskr though. Those tended to be small children. He poured some water from a jug into the pot and set it above the embers, before adding a log to the fire and working to catch the wood on fire so she could have some tea.
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Post by littlekreen on Nov 20, 2020 19:31:27 GMT -6
Mossbriar stood up weakly and whimpered as she finally got her legs underneath her. Hunger lumbered into existence and strode through her head like a bear after the season's slumber. She'd eaten because she knew she needed food but after a season the bear had simply wandered off to sleep with all the other numbness. She rubbed her fingers together as she felt the ridges of her own finger pads for the first time in so long. The new one known by Xander was helping. This place was the home she remembered. Nausea abated now but her stomach and head still bobbed like a brook leaf even if the waters had gone down.
The tears rolled down her face again as they neared the house, still a bright cobalt blue, to wipe away in a smear and say to Xander, "What's tea? I remember the clan mother talking about tea. Her voice crinkled in my head like the trees. I can remember the sounds now!"
Though the sun did its best to dry out her soggy brain Mossbriar still felt like her head was full of mud. She held onto the edges of the chair trying to remember all the polite things she was supposed to do. Memories pour out between the grain of her head like some too-long winter was now over with little fuzzy thoughts squirming from their holes. Silent for a moment when sat the brown eyes dart from the table, Xander, and cup before she could herd all the bouncing critters of thought enough to remember the winter in the smell of ash. Thirst shot up and licked her lips at an idea of a cup full of taste, warmth, and steam. A sour face came as she realized her mouth tasted disgusting.
A face of rapt attention just short of fear stared at the fire as Xander tried to start it, "Unseelie came to our home in the deep woods. There was lots of screaming and we were supposed to hide in the den. When smoke started coming in so we all had to leave because we couldn't breathe. The black dogs caught us all outside."
Deep in her mind, something wanted to run but it just made the words pour out that she'd said anything at all as all the stories in her memory bloomed into spring at once, "They made the clan mother do something to the arch that filled it with light and we weren't supposed to touch unless matron said so. Then they smashed it until the glow started to wither and threw us all in instead. We fell out into the dark and I heard everyone screaming further and further away. I tried to scream but nobody heard until I could see a wall coming closer."
The story consumed her worries with bright eyes and raise hands as more of the sensations dried out her soggy brain and the hooves fidged back and forth on her chair, "I thought I was going to go splat! I just went right through all the lines. Then there was a big scary storm with metal lightning hooks. One hit me and when I woke up in the stone bog there was the star-faced manlings that started coming when they saw me. I ran but... I was so hungry from the dark. The sun never went down and I found iron box with metal food bubbles in it to hide in. My head started turning moist and grey like the stone bog and my eye fell in."
Pantomiming a small circle with her hands the single long moment of time rooted itself in her head to grow thoughts right, "Then everything shook and there was a hole in the sky that wasn't a sun but Matron taught us a compass spell to find home so we wouldn't get lost and it pointed there! I had to run from the hungry melted things that got out too but I got down the crack to the ivy tunnels. They almost got me but I saw Miss Molly's door! So I jumped and went thumpthump on your roof. The hungry things don't understand how but I almost fell off."
Mossbriar leaned back as her eyes glazed with a smile finally realizing she'd gotten out and back as her soggy soil finally run out of words and just caught her breath. A finger in her mouth inquisitively poked at a cracked tongue with a mouth soiled blue and flaming red irritations poking through the flesh everywhere. She looked at the teapot and fire with a froth of changing emotions.
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Post by demikara on Nov 20, 2020 20:02:08 GMT -6
"We'll get you something to eat too." He offered and headed to the fridge. He cast about for something relatively light or at least not too heavy, and finally gave up and pulled out a hunk of cheese. It was better than nothing at least. "So the unseelie cast you there. I'll have to make sure the portal you were sent through is destroyed, if you can tell me about where it was." Somewhere on the border, from the sounds of it, but the border was a long thing and changed rapidly. He cut off a chunk of the cheese and handed it over to her. That would be enough to see if she had any appetite at least. "Tea is a drink. It's made with different plants and water, but the tea plant is where it gets its name. Properly, what I'm making you is a tisane." He admitted. He checked the pot. Still not hot enough. The man fixed the drink regardless. They had some ginger tea on hand from the last time one of them had been sick. It would do for them.
If it was on the border, he'd need backup other than Alex and Pwyll. That meant finding a contingent and that was going to be fun. But the Unseelie really didn't need access to the horrors of the In Between and it was in the Ratatoskr's best interest to prevent them from getting there. He'd have to send a message to the guild. After he had seen to his guest's needs. "And I don't fully understand how Molly got here, given her current situation, but that is something I'll be grilling her on extensively." Though given the dilation, probably in the human realm. There was no way Molly would be able to remain here too much longer. The clock to check the dilation in hung in his room, and right now he couldn't check it. It varied though, based entirely on what the queen felt like. Never less than equal to the human realm though. He didn't understand why, but he knew that rule.
"Can you describe the star-faced manlings to me?" Where they someone new in the In Between, some faction he hadn't heard of before? Or were they the Jin Hai, who lingered in this area of the tree. Certainly not the Guardians though. She'd have been removed from the In Between sooner if it was them. They took the rules very seriously after all.
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