The Recuperation - Part 4

They spent a good hour or so composing the messages, ensuring that they got everything down correctly. They didn't want to mess up and let slip anything about what the chief had done, not yet anyway. So they had to make sure it sounded natural and would insight are response from the chiefs it was going to.

It took a while, but they eventually finished it. Next was actually sending the thing. So, heading out of the room, he took them through his house and unlocked an unassuming door. As they walked inside, Both Lyrika and Olivia were greeted by a large room filled to the brim with communication orbs.

They plastered all of the walls, sitting on notched shelves going all the way to the celing. Each shelf had writing on the notch, while said who it was linked to. A good deal were just blank though.

"Here we have the village chief's way to message each other. I have an Orb for almost every beast-kin village in the human kingdom, plus a lot of spares, should they run out."

There wasn't much else to say after that. It was an amazing sight, but all this meant was that Teagan would have to say the same thing over and over again. They decided to stay with him, as they didn't feel too easy just taking a journey outside and it felt wrong to just leave him to deal with all this, so just waited for him to finish sending the messages.

No one got back to him instantly, and once he was done they decided that once they got back the responses, they would then make the letters actually informing the chiefs what had happened.

With that done, Teagan took them out of the room and they all left through the front door…only to be met with a little surprise.

…

"There you are."

"Huh," was the reaction from both Olivia and Lyrika as they heard a voice right next to them. Quite a familiar voice at that.

Turning around, Olivia was greeted by two floppy bunny ears in her vision. Looking down, she saw the face of the inquisitive bunny-kin from Yoban's village.

"…Philly. Wha…what are you doing here."

As she heard this, Philly just had a confused look on her face.

"That's a strange thing to ask. I made you my personal research project. This of course means I'm going to follow you around to actually research you." She said matter of factly.

"Err…I."

"Now, I don't know why you left without me, but I'm guessing the reason is because you had something very important to do. So, tell me, what have you been up to since you left the village." Philly interrupted her as she pulled out her book and quill.

…

To the side, Teagan had just ended up mute. He thought it was odd for even one woman to be following Olivia of her own will, but for another to show up, having travelled by herself to reach we, just floored him.

But he was the chief of the village and had to act like the leader he was. So, before things continued he decided to jump in. He was a busy man, he couldn't just stand there all day waiting for these people to sort out their weird relationship troubles.

"Young miss?" He called out to Philly who turned her attention to him, "If you don't mind me asking, how are you acquainted with these two."

Philly blinked a few times before she spoke up.

"Well… Olivia saved me from bandits, and I have made it my goal to figure out everything about her."

As she said that, Olivia knew it shouldn't, but it did cause a slight blush on her face.

"Okay then." Teagan said as he turned back to Olivia, "Now I have some more work to do. As I said, you are more than welcome to venture around the village, accompanied by the guards of course. Do you have any questions before I leave?"

Looking over to the girls with her, which was a strange thing to say given it had only been Lyrika all this time, she could see that Philly appeared to be quite eager to go exploring. That, or she was just happy that Teagan had stopped talking so she could ask Olivia all manner of intrusive questions.

Lyrika on the other hand mostly looked indifferent, aside from the slight joy of actually being in an urban area rather than a forest. It was only a slight amount of joy as she already had the pleasure of exploring the village and it wasn't the best of experiences.

With neither of them piping up, she turned to Teagan and decided to ask a couple of things before they parted.

"I have a problem. A friend of mine is being transported to Caldaria from the nearby town of Cassus. Do you know what road it is that connects them?"

"Transported. That makes them sound like a criminal." Teagan quickly responded with a look of worry.

"Ah no. It's more of a…forced marriage that she doesn't want."

"Oh, I see…. Well, the only one I can think of is the road west of here. It's the one that Yoban's village connects to. It will take about half a day's walk west of here through the forest to reach it."

Well now she has a location, all she needed to do was figure out how to save Ameril. She wondered if Teagan could help with that like he was the situation with the chief.

"She contacted me saying she wanted me to help…rescue her. Would you be able to help me with that as well?"

Teagan veritably shook his head.

"No, I'm afraid. Given the towns involved I imagine it's humans moving her. There is no way we could just help attack them to rescues your friend. It could start a war. Besides, it would be so much worse if humans thought we were helping an Orc kidnap a woman, which is how it would look to others."

Well, that was disappointing, but she understood. Looks like she just had to figure out another way to save her.

"Ok. That's fine. You mentioned training grounds. Can anyone go there."

Teagan pondered on this for a while as if he had a hard decision to make. It took a while of chin scratching before he replied.

"Well, you see it really is just for the guards and militia, but given your mission I think we can make an exception. I will say though that until relations improve in the village with you, I will only allow them to train you on the basics. Can't have it be that you learnt to effectively kill a man in our village while not everyone trusts you. Who knows how everyone would take it."

That was mostly a good response. If anything she did need to learn the basics so that should fine for now.

"Lastly, is there anyone in the village that can identify what this creature is." Olivia said as she opened up the basket for Teagan to see.

In her eagerness of something new happening, Philly peaked over the edge to get a good look at it too, practically blocking Teagan's view.

"Ah yes. I saw it yesterday when Lyrika brought it into the infirmary. I must say it is foreign to me. It must come from another region."

"It's not elven, I can say that for sure." Philly quickly piped up with while her head was in the basket, causing the creature to jump out of its skin.

"Philly, can you not scare it like that." Olivia reprimanded her.

"Huh," she pulled her head out, "I was just trying to inspect it, but at least we now know that it reacts well to sound. But, yeah, it's not elven. Creatures may not have been my area of study, but we did learn a lot about the fauna in the elven kingdom. This is definitely not from there."

With Philly's head out of the way, Lyrika looked over and gave it a little stroke to help calm it down after its fright.

"Well, the only person who may be able to identify it is Ortan. He has travelled through all of the kingdoms, even the demon one. So if anyone has seen this creature before, it would be him. You can usually find him working in the fields. If you do go looking for him, just ask someone in the field and they will point him out to you."

"Thank you."

"Now if you don't mind, I need to head back in. I'm sure there are a tonne of people waiting to request a meeting with me. Even more so after what happened yesterday."

With that, Teagan headed back into the house and got back to his job. This left Olivia standing in the middle of the street with Lyrika at her side, who still looked a little pouty since yesterday. On the other side was Philly who was intently staring at her, which she tried not to notice. And then there were the two guards standing ram rod straight, waiting for her to do something.

What an odd group to be travelling in.

…

"So, what does everyone want to do," she asked out loud to both Lyrika and Philly.

"…"

"…"

It was silent for a moment as both just looked up thinking about what to do, but then suddenly, they spoke up.

"The training grounds."

"Training ground."

Well that was surprising. For both Lyrika and Philly to be in sync felt a little odd, but what was more odd was why they chose the training ground to go to first.

If only Olivia knew that Lyrika was just hoping to vent her frustration for whatever this annoying feeling inside her was, and that Philly only saw it as a way to get more data on Olivia, looking at her physical capabilities and combat prowess.

But, Olivia decided to go with the majority. Once they had had their fill, they would return to find Ortan and the go to some shops. Hopefully she could get some inspiration from them on how to help Ameril.

She just hoped it wouldn't be too strenuous at the training grounds, having just recovered. And that they would actually let her do some training as well.