grey mist that moved more slowly than his brother’s. “I suppose I’ll check on Jacqueline while I’m at it.

The other rolled his eyes. “Well, now I definitely can’t call her back to deal with that wizard if he’s going to be pushing her to do some side project that will distract her,” he muttered. He frowned and sent a note off to both of his daemons to cancel the summons for the girl.

It would have been impossible to find them anyways as the nymph and search team were deep in uncharted forest.

“I smell it,” he said. The infamous werewolf, Blutnase, was a hard man to ignore when he bothered to speak. He and the other members of the team tasked with finding the missing dryad Priscilla for the benefit of Jackie’s nerves were all whittled down by training so that even the most easy going amongst them had long since lost any spare flesh or spare humor. All the men on the search and rescue team had weather beaten skin adorned with terrifying battle scars. The observer was forced to wonder if the girl, upon seeing her rescuers, might instead prefer her kidnappers or attackers over the terrifying he man squad before them.

The problem with them wasn’t really the appearance of the rag tag mixture of mercenaries and loyal soldiers of the crown. The most scary aspect of the group was their constant indulgences in violence. Some of them were part of the faction that remained loyal to the crown prince’s claim to the throne in light of his previous years of showing awareness of the situations of the people and his previous attempts to stand for their economics and needs before the board of elders convened to revise the laws, or because they were impressed by his shows of skill on the battle field and in performance tourneys. Others were loyal to Richard, charmed by the attention of the prince who chose to ride along with them on this trip and his ready humor or impressed by his knowledge of all the things and people of interest in the almost forgotten past and weren’t particularly concerned by his lack of interest in their livelihood and how well they could afford their taxes. It would be plain for any onlooker listening in to these common soldier’s conversations why the princes who were so long compared to each other and always told to be found wanting would grow to dislike each other. At the very least the different members of the search team grew to resent each other after just a few days of discussing their competing loyalties, just like the different factions of the kingdom’s frequent fights had sneaked in and poisoned the conversations and relationships of folks on either side of the division across the realm. It was no great wonder that the fight had frayed the relationship between the two possible heirs so much, nor that the soldierly types in the search party frequently gained new battle scars, hardly an endearing combination.

“The problem with that, of course,” Jackie thought, “Is that those conflicting allegiances have started almost daily skirmishes and fights and very effectively distracted the men from putting their full efforts into locating her missing sister.”

Already this day looked like a repeat of previous disasters. A few in the back were once more growling and conversing in steadily increasing volumes. It was hardly an hour past leaving camp in the morning and they were already all rearing to go at each other.

Curious, the other men in the team gravitated to the fighting faction, increasing the hostilities. She sighed in defeat. It was hardly a full hour since they had left camp and they were already rearing to go.

She sighed. With an air of grumpiness over the ruination of her carefully laid out plans she started casting through the packs stacked up on the packhorse until she found her own bag and slung it over her shoulder. After yesterday’s fiasco she had decided to prepare herself to search on her own at the first sign of continued conflict. It was just impossible to efficiently search this way. She wasn’t willing to introduce such hotheads to her defenseless little sister and risk upsetting her delicate nerves anyways so it was time to accept the risk to her own safety and go it alone. Besides, family was more important than worrying over the details of politics any day in her mind. She made a promise last night huddled by the campfire and doing her best to roll out of the way each time a wrestling match started up and an opponent threatened to topple over and crush her that today she’d prepare to search on her own at the first sign of shenanigans. When yet another little squabble broke out in the ranks she was ready to act. She quietly slipped away from the group, dodging a fist or two on her way out of the train. She made good time through the dense underbrush, the gift of her heritage allowing her to ask each little bush and bramble to move out of her path, and the fruit trees to feed her when it came time for lunch.

A lone person was much less efficient in searching an area, and more likely to miss small details, but it would surely be worse to have endless conflicts distracting the official search party from actually getting any work done at all. What she wouldn’t give to have had a team of actually focused and useful searchers- but it was no use wishing for the impossible instead of using her time to do what was within her reach here and now. After several rather uninspiring interviews with the local trees, however, she found that they were a rather wooly minded lot, and of little use for her search. At least they were more than capable of sharing some fascinating forest gossip she stored away in her memory banks for

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