Primrose has an awful time too. Unlike Miguel, Simeon is still alive.

Oh dear.

Weeks later the group concluded with a unanimous vote; Simeon was the WORST. They hadn't met a few other people yet but at the moment it was hard to imagine competition for the title. Even Therion with his deep hatred of Darius admitted Simeon was the worst. Camping the week after the stabbing of Primrose was a lot less cheerful. Things were pretty grim for most of the group. Cyrus had been speculating for a bit of time now and had abandoned the bone-bending curse redesign. (That was going to a rarely used spell in the medical field, but a useful one. Alfyn had been really excited to get the other spell to work detecting different blood types.)

He finally dared to approach Primrose. "Miss Azelheart?" He ventured, "May I ask you something about Simeon?"

"...You may ask" she said after a long moment. She implied that the answer might not be forthcoming.

"You say Simeon had not changed one bit over the years since you first met him? How literal is this expression when you are using it to describe the scoundrel?"

Now that Primrose thought about it, that was really weird. "I... meant it in the very literal sense."

"According to your friend, the Obsidians have been operating for decades. If I am correct about this hypothesis, I believe Simeon may be using more types of illicit power to cement his chokehold on Orsterra." Cyrus opened up his book to a particular bookmark. "If he is using blood magic to halt his aging..."

Primrose found this revelation to not be as shocking as she should have. Cyrus's scrutiny of Simeon was very probable. She wouldn't put it past Simeon to sacrifice people to live longer.

Cyrus continued to mutter other things and she heard him say, "Hrm? If the spell is interfered with by a blood magic charm we theoretically would see his age catch up to him almost instantaneously..."

Cyrus didn't notice Primrose had immediately snapped all of her attention to what Cyrus was saying. "Could you elaborate more professor? What spell?"

"Well this doesn't actually require knowledge of blood magic, but it definitely uses a bit of dark magic," Primrose was starting to get a malicious gleam in her eye, "It would only work against this particular immortality spell, but even you could cast iiiiii-" Cyrus noticed just how close Primrose was.

"Tell me."

"Maybe I should run this by Ophelia first? She did forbid-"

"Did you not say it was just dark magic?" Primrose was deadly serious now. "I promise to only use it on Simeon."

"Now wait a minute, this could be really dangerous. Wouldn't it be better to just use your usual methods of fighting?" In other words, stabbing, dark magic, infiltration, and having certain allies burn him alive with fire magic.

It was only a few minutes later when Therion returned to the campsite. H'aanit had asked him to check on Primrose and Cyrus while she finished getting the rest of the foraged ingredients for dinner. Linde had cornered the prey in a tree and H'aanit was making sure her shot would deliver a clean kill. Linde could very well climb that tree but didn't see much point in expending more energy than she needed to.

Therion found Primrose standing at the base of a tree and looking up. When Therion followed her gaze, he spotted a distressed Professor Albright clinging to a branch above her. Neither had noticed the return of the thief.

Primrose had the exact same look as Linde did when she had things right where she wanted.

"Are you going to teach me that spell Professor? I have never seen you refuse an eager student before."

"I really don't know about this, can we please run this proposal by the others first? You are scaring me. Could you please back off?" The ethics committee system still consisted of asking the party if things were too heretical or stupid before Cyrus was allowed to do it. More often than not, the committee said no. Even after approval, they wanted have spells graded before use in the field.

"Why are you scared? I wouldn't hurt you."

Cyrus finally saw Therion. "Therion! You have returned at a good time to intervene."

Therion thought about helping Cyrus out. "Nah." He took the basket of vegetables to the campfire to chop up for the cooking pot.

"Therion, please."

Chronological order combining with Osterra geography doesn't seem to be working when I combine it with where the characters have their priorities. I have abandoned it entirely. Next up: Wellspring.

You'll have to wait and see if their reputation survives there. Sealticge isn't about to write prescriptions, but hers would probably be made for Simeon. "1 sharpened dagger. Administer to patient intradermally until problem stops." Or however medical stuff is written.