"One that managed to keep me from most of the harm when that water got in, near the start, and one that kept them away when I ran through the streets." He eyes his arm, which is still bleeding a bit, then says, "It ran out."

"I see. We should probably move further away from the buildings, they seem to have been the epicenter."

"Yes," he says, looking behind himself and then continuing to rather-quickly-shuffle along. "Sounds good."

Into the woods, then, where the puddles are less frequent and hopefully less likely to contain dangerous animating spirits.

They are!

… But then there are some slightly creepy whispering noises.

Ugh. This again.

One whispers quite near to her ear, quite quietly but definitely intelligibly, "He doesn't seem to like you much, does he?"

The feeling's mutual if so, but she's not about to say that aloud.

"Are you hearing this?"

"I'm hearing lots of things," he says. "What in particular do you mean?"

"The whispering. It seems- different, than the times before."

"Uh, which times before are we talking about?"

"Any of the several."

"Right. Um, different how? It just sounds sort of, uh, like whispering to me."

"Some of it is intelligible to me."

"Oh," he says. "I haven't heard anything that makes sense yet."

"Hm."

"Perhaps he's lying," says another voice, slightly further away this time.

Perhaps he is, but she really doesn't want a mysterious whisper from nowhere reminding her of that.

Thario frowns. Then he looks over at Elleira.

Is that suspicion in his eyes?

This one is weak enough that she thinks she can afford to let him make the first move. But when they stop, she's fixing her lightsaber.

"So," he says. "I never did get the full story of how Tyler disappeared, I don't think."

He still has his spellbook in hand.

Suspicous.

"Not much of one. He was there, I looked down, I looked back up, he was gone."

"Where was this, again?"

"In the overgrown temple we found. You may not remember, you were somewhat catatonic."

"Right, yes, somewhat catatonic," he agrees. "And then less so catatonic, lying in a bubble of water that then mysteriously turned into a puddle of water. I recall."