As the ship continued its descent, Louise couldn't unfortunately dwell on that question for long. Thankfully, they had covered a large enough distance that the forests of Albion were visible through the clouds.
Not so thankfully, the ship, or what was left of it, was now damaged enough that steering it into anything resembling a controlled landing was but a faint dream by now.
Louise's eye was faintly twitching even as she held on for dear life. "What the fuck do we do now?"
"Feather fall," supplied Tabitha, holding onto Louise in all the right places. That just earned her an incredulous glare.
"And how the fuck do you propose we do that?!"
That earned her a flat look. "Are you a mage or not?"
Louise froze for a moment. "Yes. Right. Magic." She gripped her wand tightly. "Don't fail me now...!"
With utmost desperation in her every movement, Louise waved her wand and tried very, very hard to properly cast the feather fall spell. Unfortunately, this did not work as intended. Fortunately, the massive jets of fire erupting from around the ship held stable by the sudden appearance of multiple rune circles did more or less a good enough job at making sure the crash was merely "uncomfortable" as opposed to "lethally catastrophic".
"Well done," was Tabitha's comment. Louise wasn't sure if the other girl was being sarcastic, or if it was just her imagination. It was hard to tell, sometimes.
Louise coughed, clambering onto the slightly smoldering forest floor on unsteady legs. "W-where are we?"
She looked around. The answer seemed to be "in the woods somewhere". She sighed. "Aside from lost, that is."
"Lost." Tabitha deadpanned, the tiniest of smirks on her face.
Ramiel, not at all affected by the crash, just let out a disapproving whine and lightly bapped Tabitha upside the head with an extended crystal to show its disapproval at her joke while Team Nocturne stumbled and tumbled.
"I noticed," Louise snarked. "Any other observations, Princess Obvious?"
"Sylphid," noted said mage, rubbing her head. Said dragon also clambered from the wreckage, favoring a wing. Louise facepalmed. "Please tell me that whatever the fuck happened that my familiar was overly involved in, didn't manage to injure yours to the point that we are essentially stranded on Albion?"
Ramiel, in the background, protested Louise's remark and was summarily ignored.
"Apologies," offered Tabitha.
Louise let out another slightly growly sigh. "It's not your fault, it's-" She hissed. "Wardes." Louise began pacing. "He set Ramiel off, he knew exactly what he was doing - I'm sorry for doubting you, Tabitha - and... and..."
Louise stopped pacing abruptly, sitting down on the forest floor. "...and he's dead. And so is Wales. And so is like, all of his crew. So many people have died..."
She put her face in her hands. "At least the letter is destroyed. Literally a single upside in a world of death and destruction."
Arms encircled her. "Dummy," said Tabitha's soft voice. "Not your fault. Unforeseeable circumstances."
Ramiel chirped an agreement, floating over and shrinking down so it could fit its cuboid shape into Louise's lap and act like a heated, rock hard pillow for Louise.
Louise sniffled. "But I still feel guilty about it! And you!" She mustered a glare into her lap. "You let yourself be used as an instrument of senseless murder! How could that happen?"
T R I G G E R
Ramiel made the closest equivalent it could to a verbal shrug, not really sure either- how had Wardes figured out that the closest thing it had to a weakness was being attacked whilst using its beam was a complete mystery, and one that it likely suspected was just a mix of nerves and sheer dumb luck.
Louise just sighed angrily, leaning into Tabitha. "Sheer bad luck. Yes, I can believe it. Just fucking typical."
With a quiet hum, Ramiel seemed to agree with Louise- at least until it made a warning siren noise and immediately fired off a weak laser off into the surrounding woods, singing several trees and causing something, or rather, someone to squeak frightfully as they fell out from where they had been hiding behind the cover of a once healthy and not on fire aspen tree.
"My empire on the other side was destroyed when the Storm Hawks found a way to overload the crystal that powered my warship," Cyclonis explained. "They killed my best warriors in the process. If we had that ship back, we could devastate Terra after Terra until we found out which one had the book you're looking for."
"Could the crystal be replaced?" Kanade asked.
"Easily," Cyclonis answered. "My family has ties on this side of Atmos. I could retrieve another simply by stating that the granddaughter of Master Anarchis wanted it. The ship is another matter. It went down on the other side. Along with an arm." She stated, her staff turning into a cybernetic right arm attached to her.
"Woah..." The vocalist marveled.
Much to her surprise, instead of being frightened by her story, Hibiki was looking at her with sparkles in her eyes. "Even if you can't use it for long, your arm is really cool, Cyclo!" She exclaimed.
"Huh? You...aren't weirded out or anything?" Cyclonis asked in disbelief.
"Nope," Hibiki assured her. She grabbed a sheet of parchment, and an inked quill pen from the burning ship remains, handing it to her. "Anyways, we can get the ship back, show us where it is."
Cyclonis set quill to paper, sketching out a map of the side of Atmos she'd grown up on and where her ship had gone down.
At once, Louise had a wand in hand and pointed at the person. "Identify yourself!"
Tabitha stepped behind her, hand on her staff. Sylphid made a threatening noise.
The figure raised their hands in a calming manner. "I mean you no harm, weary travelers."
Despite the calming words, Louise only gritted her wand harder, eye twitching in a sudden burst of rage at the sight of the twin protrusions upon the other figure's chest.
"Bigger than Kirche," Tabitha spoke up unhelpfully, her staff lowering as she stared in what might have been jealousy, or awe.
Louise felt an eye twitch. Again. "Can we not talk about breasts for a fucking moment?" she hissed. In related news, she'd discovered that swearing felt good, and fuck Mother's views on that. Although in retrospect that boldness may have come about being an entire country away from Mother. Oh well.
The stranger's body language spoke only confusion. "But I was not talking about breasts?"
Ramiel just giggled, shifting back into its octahedral form after determining that the stranger was no longer a threat.
Louise sighed, lowering her wand. "You know what, we're getting nowhere. I am Louise de Valliere, and that's Tabitha. And what's your name, boob demon?"
"But I'm not a demon," the stranger declared in bewilderment. "...my name is Tiffania," she added after Louise's expectant pause. "Tiffania Westwood, and I keep an orphanage in these woods." She smiled from under her hood. "Perhaps you would like to accompany me there? I am sure I can find something to treat your injuries from that terrible crash you had..."
Louise glanced at Tabitha. The other girl shrugged. "Convenient," she offered.
"A little too convenient," Louise countered. "What if it's a trap?"
"You exist, Louise," Cyclonis reminded.
Louise eyed Tabitha. "So... trust, but verify?"
"Works," was the agreement.
Louise sighed, turning to... "Tiffania, was it? It's not that we don't trust you, but we don't quite trust you yet. I'm going to be casting a spell to verify your intent, if you don't mind?"
The boob fairy raised her hands calmly. "I don't mind... will this hurt?"
"...Probably not," Louise shrugged and waved her wand, incanting out some kind of intent spell that immediately surged out of control and went wild, casting out crimson rays of light that swirled out into an eldritch pattern.
The wind whipped up ominously as the crimson glow shone brighter, kicking up clouds of dust and shaking the leaves from the trees around them. Mere moments later, the entire pattern collapsed in on itself in a flash of green and a blur of motion that slammed into Tiffania, who immediately squeaked and fell over from the impact.
When the dust finally cleared, Tiffania found herself on the ground, with a heavy weight on top of her, a pair of red eyes gazing into her own, and a pair of lips locked right against hers.
"...What."
Louise slowly turned her head to stare at Tabitha. The other girl shrugged. Louise just as slowly turned back.
The new arrival clambered off of the boob stranger, revealing himself to be male if quite pretty in the process, and examined the back of his hand.
Louise's mind blanked. She gave Tabitha another incredulous look. "Are those...?"
"Familiar runes," the wind mage confirmed, equally incredulous. Louise faintly felt an eye twitch.
"Right," she noted. "I'm not sure why or how, but I'm blaming Ramiel." She raised a challenging eyebrow at her Familiar. "Unless you have any relevant objections?"
T A B R I S
Ramiel immediately let out what could be considered some kind of shriek of mild excitement, floating over to the white haired male and spinning around rapidly. The single word it uttered held a wealth of meaning- the male was apparently named Tabris, and was, technically speaking, Ramiel's brother.
"Ah, Ramiel," Tabris turned and smiled at the spinning octahedron, lightly patting Ramiel's surface once it stopped spinning. "My my, it certainly is interesting to see you again. I had been under the impression that you had been terminated, though it seems that you'd just been transported to another reality instead. How interesting."
Louise, Team Nocturne and Tabitha exchanged another completely incredulous glance. Then Louise pulled herself together and addressed her Familiar.
"Damn it, Ramiel, why didn't you tell me you had family back where... wherever I summoned you from! Have they been missing you? Haven't you been missing them?" She sighed in aggravation, before addressing her familiar's brother. "Tabris, was it? I take it that you're another Messenger like Ramiel. How come you two look nothing alike?"
"Hmm…" Tabris just shrugged and smiled, not even offering a modicum of an answer.
Ramiel just made a sound similar to a sigh, spinning about and answering Louise's question instead.
P R O G E N I T O R
Simply put, Tabris was the soul of the original progenitor shoved into human form or… something like that, while Ramiel was a fragmentary piece of the original progenitor's soul formed into a separate existence via millions of years of self evolution condensed into the span of fifteen years.
Louise opened her mouth.
Louise closed her mouth and thought intently.
"Je commence a croire que nous avons eu les yeux plus gros que le ventre, mon amour," muttered Tabitha next to her.
That was enough to shake Louise out of her thoughts, as she gave the other girl an odd look. "...I beg your pardon, Tabitha?"
The girl blushed. "Bigger eyes than belly," she whispered, looking away.
Louise looked on with a frown. "...Are you okay, Tabitha?"
"Fine," her companion answered resolutely. She refused to look Louise in the eye. "What of Tabris?"
Wolfram exhaled, glaring at the genially smiling Progenitor. "That is a fucking good question."