--- Lily ---
Lily was half expecting another round of targets when the ’jackpot’ sound of a casino slot machine played from all sides. Lily was wondering what that was about when the ceiling opened above them and dumped golden orbs on top of them. A lot of orbs. Lily herself was more than buried under the pile and Hedera had them going up to just under her armpits. The pile was massive.
Lily burst free from the orbs and transford "What the heck?"
"I think I found the part that makes this hard for archers..." grumbled Hedera. Even as she moved, two of the orbs in the pile were drained of energy and into her band. "So of these are real... and I have no idea how to check without just using them. That’s going to waste so of them once I’m full up... but they look really similar. Annoyingly enough, they’re not all the sa either. Like, so look more or less orb like but a few..."
Hedera held up one of the glowing orbs, pinched between two fingers of her off-hand. "I’d bet that this one? Isn’t actually an orb. You don’t mind if I use this right? I know we agreed to split them, but we can both use a few and just count them,"
"Oh that’s fine. Kat used a few by accident as well when she wasn’t really thinking about it. We were going to bring it up later but... yeah while we plan to split them evenly for little single hour orbs we’re really not stressing too much. Just glancing at Kat’s mind now I know she’s got like... at least forty of them on her right now," announced Lily.
"Oh..." Hedera glanced at the pile. "Ok that’s a lot. In that case..." Hedera pressed the orb against her bracelet... and nothing happened. She was definitely still missing ’ti’ but it didn’t react at all. "See this? This is massively annoying. It looks so close to the real thing, in fact it almost looks ’more’ real than the ones I suspect I need to grab... and this is a big pile.
"I can’t just shove them all into storage either. Even if we ignore that I could be taking more than my fair share of the loot, I don’t want to burn these all up right now. I’d be wasting them as my ’ti’ fills up. Then again, I really don’t know how many orbs are here..."
Lily thought about it for a few monts. "I... might be able to fit a few into my pockets and stuff? Hmmm... not sure how my transformation will react if I press a bunch against with my shadows and transform. I think they’d just drop to the ground or sothing. Hmm... should’ve asked Weaver for a bag even if it wasn’t enhanced at all. Though...
"Kat ntioned that the people at the village here use these things to power enchantnts. Surely they’d have a fast way to sort these out so that nobody hands in fakes? We could gather this all up and take it over there?" offered Lily.
"Right but how are we ant to carry them all?" asked Hedera. "Sure it sounds like a good idea but this is a big pile. I don’t even know if I could shove this all into the storage bracelet if I wanted to,"
"I can surround them with shadows and carry them for a good while... though... hmm... if the pathway is stable maybe we backtrack a bit and leave them at Weaver’s place?" offered Lily.
"We’re not too far away. I don’t really want to run right back... and I don’t know how annoyed Weaver would be with us for that... but it’s certainly AN option," agreed Hedera.
"Look, if we need sothing quick and dirty we could grab one of those giant mushroom caps, clean out the gills, and then turn them into a bag with the vines. They don’t need to hold too long, just long enough for to transform and the orbs should vanish with my transformation," explained Lily.
"Wait you can do that?" asked Hedera. "I always assud that there would be a limit on sothing like that,"
"There definitely is," confird Lily. "I’m not sure what the exact limits are, I haven’t been able to test them. It sort of... feels almost like grinding gears? Or perhaps forcing sothing to fit in an overstuffed bag? It’s not a fun ti but it’s possible. These orbs might be pushing it. Depends on how distorting space affects things, because the other object I had issues with was a boat that could change size. I think... all of this? It might work but I probably couldn’t carry two lots. Though I could be wrong about that. Might depend on what material this is,"
"Let’s do that then," said Hedera. "If it becos an issue we can backtrack sooner rather than later, but we always planned to head back to see Weaver and et up with Kat so it’s not the biggest downside."
Lily nodded in agreent and started to grab all the ’gold’. The easiest way was to stretch her shadow underneath the main pile and then cover it in shadows rising up from the floor and treating it like you were carrying around a sheet filled with random bits and bobs. That did leave a few orbs that had scattered across the floor but it was simple to pick them up afterwards.
Once all of the orbs had been secured, or at least most of them as neither wanted to look into every single crevice in the area, the pair headed up and out. Lily was tempted to transform back but kept that in check. With her shadows tied up in lifting all the orbs she didn’t want to burn even more mana. Still, it did an she was on edge after climbing back out and up into the open.
Looking around at the mushroom trees... it wasn’t obvious which to pick. There were a few different types and sizes hanging around, which didn’t make it easy either. *Probably best to keep it simple. Go for one of the mushrooms without anything fancy... though... are any of these ant to be poisonous? Not sure how ’inside’ my body things are when I transform. So I’d like to not pick one just in case.
Otherwise... how big do we want to go here? The larger the more spindly vine bits we’ll need to weave together but if we go to small it might not fit anyone. There is also... less moderate sized mushrooms then I was hoping for.*
Normally the mushroom trees had a few extra ’branches’ with their own caps but the imdiate area seed devoid of that. Either mushroom ’bushes’ or mushroom ’trees’. Perhaps the smaller bits had been knocked off or sothing? "You see any obviously correctly sized mushrooms? I’m seeing nothing. We might want to explore a bit,"
Hedera nodded, and the pair started to walk around. Lily found herself flinching at every sound off in the distance, her ears constantly shifting around to capture as much noise as she could and try to find whatever was about to attack her. It was a bit much, and Hedera felt the need to say sothing. "Um... are you alright? You’re looking even jumpier than I am... are you hearing sothing I should be afraid of or..."
"I’m just jumpy. I think," admitted Lily quietly. "In combat... I don’t think I’ve ever not been in mphis form. My instincts just... react better like that. I can more easily sort things out. Maybe my brain is different I don’t know. Being human, or well, humanoid like this... makes things awkward. My instincts don’t seem as clear and I feel like I’m mixing them up with other things. Are they just instincts? Am I over reacting? How many rabbit holes have I gone down. Stuff like that..."
"I can’t say I really understand... but I’d guess our hearing is comparable and I think we’re fine. Hope we find a good sized mushroom soon though. Perhaps we can settle for one of the bush sized ones if we don’t find anything soon. You freaking out is honestly freaking out a bit as well. Not idea certainly," explained Hedera.
"Sorry," said Lily.
"No, no, it’s fine. I definitely understand..." mumbled Hedera. Lily tried to calm herself down a bit but it wasn’t easy. The issue was that, even though they were just in a random stretch of likely safe woods, for Lily especially... it still felt like a combat situation to her. They were actively in Thy’s ga and it was putting her on edge in ways that it normally didn’t.
Perhaps it was that Kat wasn’t around, or paying too much direct attention. Not just that Lily was missing her presence, but that she also didn’t feel the need to prove to Kat she wasn’t scared. Hopefully they’d find sothing to dump the orbs in soon. If she had her shadow free and ready to strike at anything that attacked her she’d probably feel a lot safer. That was the hope anyway.
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