Ophelia got a vacation. She needed it. We have a conversation between two sisters, a bit of prep, and the realization that Cyrus might just be contagious.
It was only natural that Ophelia would have told her sister about her trip, albeit with a lot of abbreviation. This did not stop her from complaining to her sister. she had badly needed this break away from the cheerful, and oddly ethical, blood mage. There were other pars of the trip to talk about, They'd chatted about the scenery, the other people out in the world, the monsters, the food, and of course the weather. It was good to be home even if there was no Archbishop.
"So you know what? I found out that the Professor finally was listening to everybody else about needing more safety precautions. His ideas for that were a little different..."
"Oh?" said Lianna dutifully. She and Ophelia had parked themselves in their spot, far away from the ears of any other residents of Flamesgrace.
"Would you believe his best idea after that debacle was just to have a ranking system for spells based off how dangerous they were? He thought that alone would be enough to improve his grades to a C."
"What kind of ranking system?"
"He put them on a scale from one to eight, depending on how likely it was to cause injury or get anyone arrested for violating the laws of the Twelve. One was safe enough for any beginning student. I think that category had one spell in it."
"What spell was that?"
"It was a spell to tell someone what type of blood they have. I didn't know there were different types of blood. It used to have two spells in the category since there was that cleaning spell but Therion and Primrose pointed out how many uses the criminal underworld would have for that one. Actually, it wasn't a bad idea, it was just that I wish he'd stop the other experiments and do more than just categorize these things. It goes on, you see. I think five was spells that should only be used by an expert with an apothecary on hand and a cleric."
"If the fifth category was that bad... What was eight?"
"i believe it can be summed up as 'Use only if Galdera has escaped his prison and is about to devour Aelfric.'"
Lianna and Ophelia shuddered at the thought.
"I did actually find a paper labeled nine once... I suppose I should have felt more guilty when I burned it."
Later on the same afternoon when Lianna and Ophelia were discussing taxonomy's myriad perils Cyrus arrived. Primrose, Tressa, and Dominic trailed behind. The moment Ophelia saw Dominic, she recognized that the man had been traveling with Cyrus. She recognized the stare of someone who had gone a while on a vegetarian diet. (It was only for a short while, Dominic had seen all the diagrams before but the reminder was not a pleasant one.)
"Miss Ophelia, we are going to wait for the rest of our companions to catch up to us once we reach Duskbarrow. I have some supplies to collect on the way but we will still have time to spare, depending on how Therion's mission fares."
The party of four briefly stopped at Victor's Hollow on the way and much walking later, they made it to Duskbarrow. There also had been a detour to fight some light elementals on the way for good measure. Cyrus hoped that Therion's group would find some extra ones for their mission. He also hoped that Cordelia would be willing to help when she read the letter about the Dragonstones.
He hummed to himself in the Duskbarrow inn as he carved sigils onto traps and a backup dagger. He fine tuned plans and backup plans. Primrose helped too as she temporarily put aside some other concerns for the team's list of goals. (She probably should have been worried that she could be considered a relatively skilled blood mage now.)
Dominic was still there, much to Dominic's own chagrin.
Therion shivered his way up to Northreach with Olberic, Haa'nit. and Alfyn in tow. Alfyn, while usually a social man, knew how to keep his mouth shit when the situation called for it. Olberic and H'aanit could maintain a silence too. Linde was conspicuous but could quietly disappear when they reached town and H'aanit's expertise in navigating the wild cut their travel time by a considerable amount.
"...Do you think we have been spending too much time with Cyrus? I believe he is rubbing off on us." Olberic said thoughtfully after they had parted from the rest of the group. The other three were going to Flamesgrace to pick up Ophelia and get everything together for Lucia's exorcism. They all knew there was no way they were going to find her before she did something dreadful to herself.
"What maketh thou say that?"
"Tressa told that merchant off for selling a ring with blood magic sigils. I think the other shoppers and the man were a bit shocked that the ring had that kind of history."
Therion said, "I mean we could write that off pretty easily though. It isn't like we have the only historian in Osterra traveling with us.".
"...I stopped to correct her pronunciation of the High Hornburgian runes before I caught myself," confessed Olberic.
Therion gave him a look that normally was reserved by Olberic for Cyrus. "What happened to being a good example of not getting everyone burned at the stake for heresy?"
"Mayhap we hath been spenden too much time in the company of the professor," agreed H'aanit.
Alfyn decided not to mention that he had been telling an old lady the other day how lucky she was with her arthritis. He'd determined it wasn't a blood magic curse. He'd then made a mental note to ask Cyrus if they could figure out arthritis later. He was now thinking that was a weird way to solve arthritis.