>>6011413“It has been a while,” she acknowledges.
“It has!” you say. “I’m actually going by my father’s name as well, now. ‘Ezreal Mious Van Houtzmann’.”
She nods slowly, and then adds somewhat-critically: “It’s quite long.”
“He hasn’t even added the titles or nothin’ yet,” Carazzi notes, standing up and dusting herself off.
The Nemes’ attentions all turn to Carazzi—with short horns and hooked, deformed paw-feet resembling a goat’s cloven hooves, her green face more warty and yellow eyes brighter than even those of a regular goblin-girl. You see Nemenmo and her fellow stiffen, hand moving subtly towards the hooked ‘eagle claw’ dagger-sickles which they keep bound tightly to their bodies.
“Ezreal will do,” you say quickly, stepping between them, “and this is Carazzi. She’s a friend.”
“She was helpful in freeing me as well, brother and sister,” Khankhe adds, by way of lukewarm defence, though his own distaste and distrust for Carazzi is well-known to you.
There is a pause, and the Neme slowly relax when Carazzi—though fidgeting nervously—makes no hostile move.
“I see we have a great deal of catching up to do,” Nemeno says. “Come. We will regroup with the others.”
The Neme are capable of using <Sandswimming>, their secret magical art, to delve into those areas of the wasteland where the ground is deeply-packed with dust and fine gravel. Unfortunately, the rest of you are not; even your <Improved Aethereal Form> cannot penetrate the Earth, nor grant you sight to navigate with if you were to delve into the ground below. You must travel on foot, through the unpleasant heat of the day. The Neme do not seem to feel it, mind you, nor does elementally-attuned Izirina, but the rets of you do.
“Have you got the magic to <summon> an air elemental, to cool us off?” you ask Izirina.
She frowns and shakes her head, admitting: “I’m still quite drained from the battle.”
“Me too,” you admit, and Costella fans herself with her wide-brimmed straw sunhat.
“It is not far now,” Nemenmo assures you, and then adds: “You have grown powerful, but done no physical conditioning.”
“Less than maybe I should have,” you cringe. “I was, uh, on the moon for a while. Gravity’s lower there.”
“That is no excuse to neglect exercise,” she chastises you.
You pout, but she has already turned away, and doesn’t see it. You sigh, and carry on.
Eventually, you spy some small, humanoid silhouettes upon the ground. You approach cautiously, and find the remains of goblins, crushed and mangled, and in many cases partly devoured. Scattered around them are the remnants of familiar bundles of cloth—those which had been used to bundle the horse-meat rations for those slavers whom you banished from your overlarge party.
“The trolls must have found them, too,” you say.
