It seemed that Signum was the last one to give up, as the rest of the Wolkenritter were waiting for her in the clearing by the original stump. Immediately upon seeing her, Vita rose and crossed the clearing towards her. "How many?"

"One hundred four," Signum answered her.

"Damn it," Vita groused. "Not only do they only give a little less than a page each, there also aren't all that many of them in this forest!" She kicked the stump of the tree that had captured Shamal. Her face betrayed nothing, though she turned and sat on the stump huffily, favoring the foot she used.

"Do you think we got all of them?" Zafira asked.

"All the ones that it's possible to sense from here," Shamal confirmed. "I think they had been dying out to begin with."

"We'll just have to report that there aren't any more of them to Master. She'll give us new orders." Shamal walked into the center of the clearing, and the rest followed her before getting into the formation they used when they travelled the dimensions. "Is anyone… does anyone need rest?" Signum asked, stalling Shamal from starting the transfer process.

Zafira's eyes flashed. Vita huffed. Shamal sighed. "At least a little bit," Shamal said. "We've been out here for more than nine hours now."

Signum nodded. "It would be best if we rested. If we have to collect pages from anything other than trees-" the emphasis on the word was soft, but it was definite- "then we'd serve our master better at full strength."

Vita blew out a noisy sigh. "Fine." Zafira and Shamal merely nodded.

"Alright. Shamal, if you please."

Discovery

This is more like it, Vita remarked. She was standing on one of the many flat roofs in that part of the city that she had been assigned. She was in her Knight's Armor, which had been created by her master. Her eyes were closed on the gorgeous sight of the nighttime cityscape and all of its myriad sights.

Focus, came the response. Signum could pack so much into a single word. Vita even felt mildly chastised, though she pushed the feeling away.

I sense one I think I can take quickly enough, Zafira interjected, possibly unaware of the short conversation between his companions. I'll report when I need the Book.

Fight with the Saint's blessing, Shamal said, and they all felt Zafira's presence in the link fade to idle. The link between them was always there, though they could dismiss it to a degree that they didn't have to think about it when they needed to focus on something else and not be disturbed. If any of the rest of them wanted to reach Zafira now, all they had to do was send a particularly strong jolt with their message, and he would get it. Though they would risk having him get it at an… inopportune time.

I've got one, Signum said. She said no more, and immediately faded from the link.

Fight with the Saint's blessing, Shamal said anyway, though only Vita could hear her.

We will, Vita said along the link, as she homed in on a possible candidate for her own target. This is the easy part. Nobody's expecting us now. Aha! A perfect candidate. I've got one too. Keep alert, Shamal.

Fight with the Saint's blessing.

Vita opened her eyes, mostly to roll them, though Shamal couldn't see this. Vita let her own presence in the link fade as she focused her magical senses on the Linker Core that she had identified. It was in an alley two blocks away from the building that Vita was on, and all alone. She jumped down from the building into an alley on one side, using her flight ability to slow her descent to something manageable. Her Master had been blessed with enough foresight to make their armor look somewhat in place in the city that she had sent them to in order to collect more pages. Vita could walk among the few people that were out this late at night and not be thought of as more than merely eccentric. Flying around would have been too much, however, so she kept her penchant for high places to herself as best she could.

She walked out from the alley onto the street with no one the wiser as to where she had come from. The one person visible from where she stood didn't even look at her. Vita similarly paid the man no mind as she turned the other direction in order to follow the Linker Core that she sensed. He was still in the alley, hadn't even moved an inch since Vita had identified him as her next target. She quickly and quietly walked to the entrance of the alley in question, meeting only two other people. Both of those others were drunk, and could be ignored even more safely than the one that had ignored Vita.

As Vita turned the corner and walked into the alley, she found that her target was male and facing the other direction. She called Graf Eisen to her hand from his idle form. She felt her barrier lock in place and instantly charged the man, who stiffened as he also felt the barrier fall into place. He turned quickly. Quickly enough that his Device managed an Auto-Guard on Vita's initial strike.

"Protection." Graf Eisen met a blue shield and couldn't break through it with such a simple strike, though only a simple strike had the shot of not dealing with the Auto-Guard in the first place. Vita gritted her teeth. Hard way. Dammit. She sprang back from the stalemate.

"Graf Eisen!"

"Jawohl! Schwalbe Fleigen!" She tossed up the steel ball and struck true with Eisen's face. The ball was met by a shield that the man was casting himself. Vita used his distraction to jump (aided by her flight) over him and fall in with another strike. But she met another shield. The man was trying to hold up two shields at once, and Vita could tell that he couldn't do it for very long. So she pushed on.

"Graf Eisen! Push through it!"

"Jawohl!" She controlled the steel ball for a moment, pulling it back and then attacking again at a slightly different angle just as she pushed harder on her own side. Predictably, the man redoubled his efforts at the Knight's side while he let the ball smack his Barrier Jacket in the back. This threw him off balance, and Vita saw his face twisted in confusion right before she broke through her own side and knocked him out with a blow to the chin.

She swung Graf Eisen down and to the side, letting her steel ball disappear as she reconnected to her link to the rest of the Wolkenritter. I'm done. Probably two or three pages.

I'm on my way, she got from Shamal. Signum got four pages. Zafira hasn't reported back yet.

Vita only grinned. This is so much faster.

How many pages have we collected now?

Three hundred ninety-six.

Has the master given us a new assignment for tomorrow?

No. We're to change cities again, but the plan is the same.

So she doesn't mind if we get discovered now by… whoever she's afraid of.

Perhaps. We do seem to be following a predictable pattern now.

Do you remember anything about them?

Not really. I remember that in the last several cycles we've met organized resistance, but…

Yeah. I don't remember much about them either.

Stay on your toes, then. We're not to be caught.

We won't be.

"George! George!"

George looked up from his desk, where he had been working on paperwork from his last assignment on a world. He blinked suddenly and found that he had to rub his eyes. He needed to take a break, and whatever Paige was calling his name about would probably do. "In here!" he called. He leaned back in his chair and dismissed the screen so that he wouldn't be looking at it while he took his 'break'.

Paige, a pretty young woman of about twenty, spun around the corner into the lab. It was her domain, really, though she often let George or Tanya do any reports they needed to in her lab. It was odd to have her charge up to him from somewhere else while he was working there. Normally it was the other way around. "There you are! Tanya's getting an assignment from the Admiral right now. I think we're going to be investigating something soon!"

George raised his eyebrows. "We just finished that thing on Unadministered Twenty…"

Paige waved her hand dismissively. "No, no. That thing was easy; just tell idiots that they're idiots, have them attack us and we… well, you and Tanya… defeat them and bring them into custody. No, this time we have a mystery!"

George sighed and stretched. His paperwork could wait. "You're far too excited about having something to solve."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "And you're far too blasé," she accused. "You're never all that excited when we actually get to do something fun."

"As enjoyable as it is to watch the two of you go at it, I think you'd like to hear what's going on?" Tanya was in the doorway with a smirk on her face. Tanya had been an Enforcer in the Bureau for nearly twenty years, but she still looked like she was Paige's age. She had the same hair color as the younger girl, though she kept it cropped short, while Paige preferred hers in a long braid.

Paige turned around and squealed. George winced. "Oh! Yes, of course we do! What are we going to be doing, Tanya?" Paige asked.

"We're to investigate some mysterious disappearances. Apparently some of the regular mage patrols on Tyr have been attacked while out on their patrols. None of them remember enough about their attackers to give them any sort of lead as to what their attackers look like. All of them – that lived, anyway - are in the Hospital with various levels of magical exhaustion."

George tilted his head to one side. "Do we have any ideas?"

"They didn't have a clue," Tanya said, "and I have too many floating around. We're on our way to Tyr right now in order to talk to the attacked and perhaps catch the attackers in the act."

Paige clapped her hands together. "I'll take a look at your Devices! And then I'll prep the sensors for noting magical spikes on the world below… Oh! I can't wait!" And then she was off among her instruments and the two Devices that were kept there.

George gave a long-suffering look to Tanya. "How much time?"

"Six hours," Tanya replied. "You should get some shut-eye; you look awful."

George grumbled as Tanya left the room and Paige squealed again.

We failed the master that time.

No, the master failed himself. It was his fault that those mages caught you and destroyed the Book.

We should have been able to stop it.

Zafira, there are things that even you Knights can't do.

It's not a question of what we can and can't do. It's a question of what we should and should not be able to do.

No, Zafira. We can't save the master from their own mistakes. It requires more free will than they allow us.

Do you think the master that finally masters us will be able to get around that?

I think the master that masters us will be the right master.