Originally divided into two groups, the remaining four soldiers turned their attention to Kanade as Lyssa valiantly charged after the colossus. Without another moment to spare, all four charged at the arcane singer, swords readied. Enhanced by her 'EX' mode, the girl found it pitifully easy to dodge the flurry of strikes from the four enemies, side-stepping and ducking each. They kept at it, however, remaining just beside her in a circle, prepared to continue their assault.
The colossus rose its sword skyward for a split second. As if stricken by a lightning bolt from the soaring storm, the blade erupted in blue light, suddenly aflame with ethereal energy. Gripping it with both hands, the immense machine brought it in a long but powerful strike across the ground for Lyssa. The telegraph was just enough for Lyssa to notice and she avoided the blade, feeling the wind it pulled gust against her side.
Frua gave Natalya a light nod as she left and a smile, waving goodbye before returning his attention diligently to Aurora. He listened to Aurora's short recollection of previous events. How she had known such was immaterial to Frua, who simply assumed that word, like it usually did, spread fast. He closed his eyes and collected his thoughts.
"From what we have gleaned, Carol was an experiment of the Madurn, and eventually discovered by Kaileb who continued to keep her secret. Astra Forbes seemed to have grown fond of Carol before deciding to spirit her away from Kaileb. I can only assume Astra knew something of Kaileb's plans with Carol, but they remain unknown to us." He opened his eyes and looked sternly to Aurora. "That is all we know currently." The head librarian gave Aurora an expectant look, obviously waiting and
hoping for her to divulge something new.
-------------------------------------
In the darkness of the lower floor, the torch was silent. The air was so still and stale it almost seemed like a vacuum. Ferenfel sneezed. The librarian continued forward, illuminating empty bookshelves as they passed them by. Ferenfel hugged close to Okine as they followed suit.
"Did you empty the bookshelves or something?" Okine asked, looking side to side.
"Indeed. It was difficult to light the place here, so we opted to bring them to the surface instead. But those books aren't what we need your help with," they said. The group reached the end of the room, a stone, featureless wall. The Librarian extended a hand to the surface, pressing their palm upon it. A red glow glimmered underneath the edges of their skin and the sounds of distant rumbling caught their ears. After a moment, the stone wall simply faded from existence, replaced by empty air and further darkness. Stepping through, they found themselves in yet another darkened room.
"We've yet to explore the true size of this room. Keep close, lest you lose your way," the librarian urged. They beckoned forward and continued into the darkness. Shelves were replaced by single, man-sized rectangular pillars erecting from the ground. They were featureless until one of them came close, at which point they glowed with a red symbol, like magical tripwires.
The librarian stopped at a particular pillar and held their hand out to it. Like in the library above, as Natalya had once experienced, the librarians could pull books from flat surfaces inscribed with runes. The librarian did just that, materializing a solid book from the glowing rune on the pillar.
"We've managed to find this particular book, a map," they said, opening it up to a two-page image depicting a misshapen object. It was empty and without words, save for one dot and 'Drisbane' printed beside it. "We could only unlock the general shape of the map, but the labels and features elude us. We've figured out that merely mentioning certain key words reveals portions of the information, but things such as names of places cannot be stated, since we have no information on them in the first place. For example..." The librarian said the word 'compass' to the book, and a cardinal compass faded into existence on one of the pages outside the outlined map.
"Oh! Let me try!" Ferenfel said, sliding over to the librarian's side. "
Quieta!" To the north of the outline, the word Quieta appeared in large letters. Ferenfel made a noise of glee before grabbing Okine's shoulders and pulling her close. "Your turn!" Okine smiled meekly and hesitated.
"E-e-el Centurie islands..." she mumbled. They waited. Nothing appeared. Ferenfel looked towards Okine with worry.
"Is it off the map, Ok-" the elf was cut off by a loud, metallic sound in the distance. It echoed several times.
"What was that?" Okine asked. The librarian was quiet for a moment, peering into the darkness before shaking their head.
"I-I'm not sure." In the far distance, red symbols lit up in sequence, as if someone or
something was walking by the pillars. As it came closer, the sound of metal needles scurrying across the stone ground became louder and louder.
Jivev clasped at her chest upon Varanense's appearance, somewhat relieved to find another Guardian present and willing to aid them. The Guardian captain could tell who the white-haired girl was; she was already familiar from Varanense's constant mention of Lizbaine. "Good to have you here, Varry," she said to the bowman. Lizbaine backed up towards the bowman's illusion, clasping her shoulder with a wince. She knew when it was time to fall back.
"Tch. Same to you. This guy's no pushover," she cautioned to Varanense. The knight that she had already hit with an arrow fell to one knee, seemingly willing to sit it out at that point. The other three, two similarly armored knights, and a foreboding, masked knight at the head of their formation, seemed fully ready to fight.
The unknown captain took a step forward as Halberd threatened them, expression obscured by a masked-helmet. "Your city knowingly harbors criminals," he said, "...and this woman lied to us, wasting our time. I suggest you allow us to search your city unimpeded." Lizbaine mumbled to Varanense.
"There's a lot more of them outside the city walls, and supposedly an entire empire behind them. Careful what you decide to do. Don't avenge me if it means sparking a war."
A vein nearly popped on Beni's head, for what reason neither Palacian could fathom. Still, she followed Junkiro's directions and hid behind Kazuma's mech, being just small enough to be obscured completely. Presumably the engineer followed Junkiro's directions as well and kept further away from the city wall. Merely standing behind him in the face of the oncoming forces wouldn't have been enough, after all.
The unknown soldiers approached Junkiro, looking about for Kazuma who had himself hidden away nearby behind some houses, still within earshot of the discussion. "Greetings citizen of Drisbane. We're looking for six individuals. They're very hard to miss. They must have arrived on that ship that crashed there. A red-haired woman, short, with goggles most likely. A dragonoid, a man of white hair, wears priestly robes, "he listed them off, "an elf and a girl with a trident tattoo on her cheek... and a knightess." There were at least two dozen soldiers just behind him, most of them looking towards the ship rather than Junkiro.
"It would help us greatly if you knew their whereabouts." The man looked confused for a moment, "There was another boy with you here, no?"
Meanwhile, Beni kept close by Kazuma, now obscured by a home rather than his suit alone. She knocked her fist on his suit twice. "Nice gear you got here. I guess Drisbane isn't as backwards as I thought."
