"Co back."
"I will."
She put her hand briefly on his face the way she sotis did when she was checking sothing she could not articulate but knew the answer to by feel, and then stepped back fully with the settled quality of soone who had done what they needed to do and was not going to extend it further than that.
"I will take care of everything."
Jane was near the gate.
She had been waiting without making a production of it, standing a few paces from the gate with her hands folded in front of her and her expression doing the careful composed thing she did when she was holding sothing in and was not going to let it be visible.
When he ca close enough she looked at him directly with the gold eyes that had always been difficult to look at directly for too long without sothing happening, and for a mont she did not say anything, just looked at him with the full weight of everything that existed between them that had not been resolved and might not be resolved for a long ti.
Then she stepped forward and hugged him, before he had fully processed that she was going to, her face against his shoulder and her arms around him with the particular force of soone who had been holding themselves very still for a long ti and had found a mont where they did not have to.
"Return safely." Quietly, against the fabric. "Please."
He put one arm around her and held it for a mont.
She stepped back and her eyes were bright in a way she was not going to let beco anything further, pulling the composure around herself quickly with the practiced ease of soone who had been doing exactly this, managing exactly this, for a very long ti.
"I will."
Leon was near the inner barrier.
He straightened when Neil approached and looked at him with the focused professional attention he gave to things that mattered and that he was going to take responsibility for.
"Everything will be handled while you are away." Simply and with total certainty.
Neil looked at him for a mont.
"Good."
Magnar was outside the gate, sitting with his weight back on his haunches and his amber eyes on Neil from the mont he ca into view, tracking him with the focused attention of a familiar who had already understood sothing about what was happening and had an opinion about it.
Neil crouched in front of him and put his hand on the large head.
The amber eyes looked back at him with the expression Magnar had when he was unhappy about a decision that had already been made and knew that saying so would not change it, the particular quality of a creature who understood the logic but reserved the right to register his displeasure about it anyway.
"Not this one." Neil said. "The air is toxic and the creatures use poison. You would not last long enough to help."
Magnar made a low sound that was comntary rather than acceptance but did not push further, which was its own kind of acceptance, and his tail moved once in the specific way it moved when he was agreeing to sothing he did not like.
Neil stood and walked.
He called Cynthia on the way through the settlent streets toward the teleportation building.
The holographic display opened in front of him as he walked and she appeared in it with the composed quality she always had, her eyes moving over him with the imdiate and thorough assessnt she gave to his current state before engaging with whatever the call was about.
"You are leaving for sowhere tonight."
"A realm called the Wooden Poisoned Realm. Wood Snakes. 4th Origin."
A brief silence that was not processing but evaluation, the kind of silence that happened when she was deciding what was useful to say rather than what she wanted to say.
"The air in that realm is incompatible with human respiration."
"Not going as a human."
She moved to the implications without spending more ti on the premise.
"The Wood Snakes. Their venom works at the cellular level, it is not a simple toxin that the body can just fight off with enough constitution. It accumulates even with strong resistance, each exposure adding to what the previous ones left behind, and if you let it build past the point where your clearance thods can process it then you are dealing with a problem that grows faster than any response you have." She paused. "Their regeneration is active and fast and scales with the class tier. Gold class and above can regenerate significant damage in seconds, not gradually, not with diminishing returns in the mont, in actual seconds. Sustained damage does not work against them. You need to destroy each target fast enough that the regeneration cannot aningfully close the wound before the next strike."
"I know."
"One clean lethal strike is worth more than extended contact. The Inferno chain’s internal discharge model is your best tool against the regeneration because it works inside the target rather than on the surface, but you need to get the binding clean on the first attempt because a Gold class or above will not give you a second opportunity to wrap it the sa way."
The specificity of the detail was not the kind of thing that ca from general knowledge of the realm.
"You are going anyway." She said, and her voice had the quality it had when she had accepted sothing rather than resigned herself to it.
"Yes."
"Then check your internal state for venom accumulation at regular intervals whether or not you notice any symptoms. The early stages do not always feel like anything is wrong and by the ti you notice sothing wrong the accumulation is already at the level where clearing it takes significantly more ti and energy than clearing it early would have." She paused. "Your Aquamorph is the right tool for the clearance. Use it regularly and do not wait for symptoms."
"I will."
A pause that was different from the informational ones, quieter, carrying sothing she was deciding how to fra.
"Co back in one piece." The register she used when she was saying the actual thing rather than the professional version of it, the small and real version that existed underneath the teacher and the queen and all the other things she was in any given context.
He looked at her in the display for a mont.
"I will."
The call ended and the display closed and he kept walking through the settlent streets with the evening air cool around him and the lights of the domain visible behind him in the direction he had co from.
Randy was in the open area near the settlent’s eastern corridor when Neil arrived and the scene was exactly what he had expected and slightly more elaborate than he had anticipated.
Sixty or so people were distributed around Randy in the configuration of people who were actively engaged in a transaction they found exciting, hands moving, voices raised in the particular animated way of a crowd that had money in play, and Randy himself was in the exact centre of it all with the expression of a man operating in his natural and preferred environnt.
He saw Neil coming and the expression shifted into sothing smoother and more official with the speed of soone who had been practicing that particular transition for a very long ti.
"Oh, you are here." He waved his hand in a general dispersal gesture at the crowd. "Just finishing up so administrative settlent business. Minor. Nothing worth noting."
The crowd dispersed with the reluctant energy of people whose interesting business had been interrupted at an inopportune mont, several of them looking at Neil with the assessing quality of people who had just been discussing him in financial terms.
Neil said nothing about what he had just walked into.
Randy straightened his collar and fell into step beside him toward the main teleportation building.
"These Wood Snakes." He said, after a mont, the tone of soone providing information they had already decided to provide. "Their territory in that realm is dense in a way that is different from most hunting environnts.
No real visibility beyond a few tres in any direction, the canopy is essentially total, and the plant systems move with them continuously.
The attack can co from below as easily as from in front, they use the root networks to move underground faster than they move on the surface, and they can redirect those root networks to change the terrain during an engagent."
Neil filed this.
"The Gold class ones have a ntal component to their venom." Randy said. "Not control, nothing that direct, but it creates confusion in a specific way. It distorts your threat assessnt, makes things seem less dangerous than they are, makes you more willing to take risks that you would not otherwise take. It is subtle and it works by the ti you notice it is working."
Neil looked at him sideways.
"How do you know this."
Randy kept his eyes on the path ahead.
"I know things." He said, without elaboration or any indication that elaboration was available.
The main teleportation building was large and functional, its platforms arranged in rows with the efficient layout of infrastructure that handled significant daily traffic, operators running calibrations at each station with the practiced movents of people who had done this long enough that the sequence was entirely automatic.
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