Allia springs into action, erecting a dozen barriers with a gesture – half around them and half around Chaxal’s monoskiff.

  “Go!” she shouts, “I’ll cover!”

  She can barely see his nod of gratitude through the glare. He jumps onto the small cylinder barely worthy of the name ‘skiff’ and immediately lifts off and zooms into the night with rapid acceleration. She can’t see him go, but feels the barriers anchored to the craft move with it.

  The response is heard rather than seen, as the ripping-like firing sound of a half dozen carbines shoot after him, followed by the crackling booms of shield piercers.

  Allia feels her barriers around the skiff get impacted, first by several small hits, then by the penetrative force of a shield piercer. Having anticipated this, she made the barriers more permeable, allowing them to be penetrated more easily, but requiring more to shatter. All except the innermost one which she made maximally rigid as a final defence.

  The shield piercer bolt that hits easily tears through the first 5 barriers, but its force is spent and the final barrier holds.

  Unfortunately, the outer barriers, while less prone to shattering, do get overwhelmed. But she simply creates more, finding that she can generate domes around barriers that she has already created even without line of sight.

  Seeing their prey escaping, the second floating light source rapidly veers away and gives chase. Allia anticipates an attack from the remaining enemy, erects more constructs around her, including spears, but no shots come. Rather, a dozen soldiery looking figures, armed with carbines and shield piercers and wearing armoured vests, helmets and kneepads of the standard form, rappel down from what is deducibly a light troop transport of the variety Allia briefly flew in the night before. Seeing she has time, Allia puts on her sun shades, dimming the light just enough to make out Professor J standing in the middle of them, wearing her own armoured vest, scowling fiercely.

  “We said to lie on the ground!” The Professor shouts through a voice augmenting enchantment.

  Allia crosses her arms, standing up straighter in defiance. “Make me.”

  J’s good eye twitches in irritation as she walks up to the domes, arms akimbo. “You’re this close to be charged with treason Allia. Stop erecting barriers around the fugitive.”

  Allia laughs. “Treason? On what authority? Your buddies have Adventurer League’s patches on their armour. They don’t have jurisdiction over civilians.” As Allia speaks, she continues to gesture, moving only one wrist to make the constructs while keeping her arms crossed. It’s less obvious that way, but it’s more about keeping posture than subtlety.

  J narrows her eye at her mention of the patches, and turns around to look at them – obviously trying to see if she can make out the globe based symbol in the glaring light. “Interesting,” she mutters to herself, obviously unable to make them out even with a shade spell over her eye, her face briefly softening before resuming her scowl. “But you’re not quite correct. While they don’t have jurisdiction over civilians, they do have joint jurisdiction in pursuing spies.”

  “Spies?” Allia asks innocently? “What spies?”

  “The fugitive for one, you for two, with whatever information you leaked to them about the orb.”

  “Pfft. We didn’t’ leak anything. Besides, what evidence do you have that they were a spy? For whom?”

  “Well, considering that they just fled directly towards a West Chthonian warship…”

  “Disavowed warship. We heard what they said in the evac announcement.”

  “If you heard the announcement, then what are you doing here if not passing off information to a spy? The Ferry is set to leave in 10 minutes. You don’t have time to make it back.”

  Allia rolls her eyes. “Well not now we don’t, after you stopped us for no reason.”

  J closes her eye and taps her foot irritably, breathing deeply before opening it again. “We might not have the authority to charge you, but we can take you into custody and bring you to someone who can.”

  “Ha, that just means you don’t have the capacity to disappear me. That means due process, and if I get due process, I’ll take every opportunity to spread the information about the orb to everyone I can until the army intercedes. They might not save me, but you’ll still lose the orb.”

  “Allia, I am warning you, if you do not stop erecting new barriers over the fugitive, I will order them to do whatever they can to subdue you. 1…2… “

  “Fine!” Allia says, raising her hands in the air in sign of surrender. “I’ve stopped. No reason to get in a fuss.”

  J stares at Allia suspiciously, then pulls out a short range chatterbox from her coat. “Pelican 1. Contact Pelican 2 and ask if they just lost contact with the fugitive.”

  “Well, I don’t know about lost contact, but they certainly stop hitting.” Allia smugly smirks, causing J to glare at her.”

  “…Rogger,” says a voice on the box, “…Pelican 2 has reported that the CNS baited breath has enveloped the fugitive with their shield projectors after they flashed a coded light sequence. They’re requesting instructions. Should they maintain distance?”

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  J scowls at Allia in disgust and shakes no. “No point. Have them come back. We’re bringing the girls home.”

  “Fine,” Allia says, cross her arms again. “I suppose that’s only fair since you stopped us from making the ferry.” J scowls at Allia reframing the statement which was clearly meant to be ominous. “But we need you to stop by the village first. We left our stuff there.”

  “Surely there’s nothing there worth the delay in getting back to the city’s shields?” J asks with gritted teeth.

  All shrugs sarcastically. “Just gelato.”

  J sighs and rubs her eye. “Fine, but you’re sharing some with me.”

  Allia smiles cheerfully. “Sure! We’d love to!” Which of course causes J to sigh again.

  The ride to the village is short, and they quickly find their stash and bring it on board. J then takes the girls to a trio of seats near the front of the boat’s recessed centre platform, and they open the tub. They lack bowls and have only 2 disposable wooden spoons, so Allia creates her own with a wave.”

  “Interesting,” J says, examining her served gelato inside of the bowl of light and prodding it with the spoon of light before finally eating some. “The outside of the bowl is normal for holding, but the inside is cold to keep the gelato frozen as you eat. Interesting that you can do that when the bowl is so thing. The spoon’s texture is as good as a metal spoon’s, but the flavour it imparts is more like… hmmm, it’s hard to describe. Almost like how the aftermath of a lightning strike smells.”

  “Are we here to talk about cutlery or why you’re abducting us?” Sarrah says, stabbing her own spoon into her gelato.

  “Sarrah, please,” Allia says with an ironic smile, “Our professor isn’t abducting us. She’s just taking us home. Isn’t she?” Allia says, starring challengingly at J, eyes darting to the spears she constructed and brought on board.

  J’s eye narrows. “That depends on what you have to say. Let’s start with why you were on the island.”

  “No,” Sarrah interjects, “let’s start with why you’re on the island. How were you tracking us?”

  J shrugs. “Allia is still emitting the orb’s energy, which is communicating with the other sites. It took us a while to get our lab back in order, only to find the energy source that we had assumed was still in Newflor to be 20 miles away on a low security island. Naturally we assumed you were abducted and quickly organized a rescue. Imagine our surprise when you were instead having friendly chat with West Chthonian spy.”

  “Not Chthonian, demon.” Sarrah says, and smirks at the shock on J’s face.

  “And you ask ‘what treason?’” J asks.

  Sarrah shakes her head. “We’re not at war with the Demonic Councils yet. We didn’t tell him about the orb, or anything else restricted. All we did was let him go.”

  “We saw you chant over his monoskiff,” J counters.

  Sarrah shrugs. “Chanting is hardly illegal. You can’t prove that whatever spell I cast aided him in an illegal activity.”

  “But protecting him on his escape definitely did,” J says, looking at Allia.

  Allia shrugs. “I don’t even know if anything he did was illegal. But what I do know is that even if he was, we weren’t under any obligation to stop him, and you hadn’t identified yourself.”

  J sighs and takes a few more bites of her gelato before levelling her gaze more seriously. “Stop this nonsense. I’m not your enemy. I’m not going to trip you up on legal technicality. Just tell me why you helped him even though you knew he was demon.”

  Allia looks to her friend, then back to J and nods. “Because I decided to let him go, and it would have been sad to have him be immediately captured after going through the effort of making that decision. Why I let him go though… I mean… heh, he was just so pathetic. Right Sarrah?” Sarrah smiles in confirmation. “But, I still believed he meant what he said about peace… well, I guess I wanted to believe.”

  “Peace?” J sneers, “You call… no, anything I have to say should be too obvious to even utter. Have you considered the information we could have gotten from him about last night’s attack?”

  Allia shakes no. “He said he didn’t know about it. That they weren’t informed. Otherwise, he would have already left.”

  J’s face twitches. “He may have been able to convince you of such drivel, but we have more sophisticated methods.”

  “Mindripping?” Sarrah asks, her tone challenging.

  J looks at her directly in the eyes then says, without any emotion, “The use of mindripping is barred by international law signed by the Thalassian Federation and nearly every nation.

  “But not the Demonic Councils,” Sarrah points out. “It’d still be illegal, but who’s to enforce it when the injured party does the same thing?”

  J looks away. “I can neither confirm nor deny any rumours regarding the fate of demonic prisoners.”

  “Well,” Sarrah says, leaning back into her seat as she takes another bite of gelato, “with such a glowing reassurance, you can understand how we’d be hesitant to turn him over. His face would haunt our dreams.”

  J sighs. “Fine, we will table that for now. You still haven’t said what you were doing here to begin with.”

  Sarrah shrugs. “I wanted to go to the beach.”

  “The beach? Why would you…? You know how valuable the orb is. Why would you go someplace so insecure when you know Allia is targeted?”

  Sarrah just shrugs, so Allia answers. “Why wouldn’t we? Crystal Point may be less protected than Newflor, but it’s still part of the federation. Why wouldn’t we think it’d be safe from demons. In fact, it should have been safer, considering they already proved they could reach us in Newflor, so it makes perfect sense to go someplace they wouldn’t expect. You didn’t tell us my orb could be tracked after all.”

  J’s face sours. “We didn’t know it would still be detectable in you.”

  “Can the demons track her?” Sarrah asks.

  J hesitates. “We don’t know. We haven’t found whoever leaked the existence of the orb in first place, so we don’t know what they’ve told them.”

  “Then it seems to me you’re overreacting. Besides, even if the demons could track her, she’d be as safe back there as she would in Newflor. Safer even, with all the mages.”

  J throws her hands up in exasperation. “Fine! You still haven’t told me how you came across the spy.”

  Sarrah shrugs. “Allia saw through his disguise. He only hid his face. Probably would do more usually, but didn’t want to pay the discreteness for the whole body since he likely thought he would need it for the escape.”

  J nods. “And did he say if there were others like him?”

  Sarrah nods. “He mentioned a plurality who all received instructions to flee to the baited breath, though he didn’t have any idea as to why.”

  “Hmm… interesting. I suppose that does explain what they’re doing here, but the why is still baffling. Surely they could have found a subtler escape vehicle? What else did he say?”

  Sarrah and Allia looks at each other, an exchange of expressions passing between them before they both look at J with innocent smiles. “We’re not in trouble then?”

  J sighs. “I suppose if you did gain information, then I see no reason to pursue this. After all, as you said we have no jurisdiction over Thalassian citizens, and you do have the orb as a bargaining chip, even if you did let further information slip away.”

  “Not much though,” Sarrah says. “He said that the other spies were already being taken into custody, stating that the army already knew who they are.”

  “Even more interesting,” J mutters, “what else did he say.”

  The girls look at each other again, then quickly convey the highlights on the way back to the city.