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Li returned to Kel\'thor, feeling the damp humidity of its core\'s cavern wash over him. Immediately, he was greeted with a "Papa!" from Tia, which was then followed by an energetic hug where she leaped up to put her hands arounds his neck.

He patted Tia\'s back and said wonderingly, "Was I gone long? Why the strong reaction?"

Ven\'thur spoke. "Not at all. Twenty-five minutes exact. Quite a short trip if I must say so myself."

"The shorter the better," replied Li. "I have my people to tend to now, and also, it is finally time for you to get a good night\'s sleep."

Li pried Tia from his neck and held her high in the air, and she giggled happily with fanged grin. "Going home now?"

"Yes, going home now." Li nodded to Ven\'thur. "Prepare a passageway back to Riviera. Our business here is done."

"Ah, to leave Kel\'thor so early," said Ven\'thur wistfully. "But it shall be as you say. I will prepare a portal immediately. The residual energy left in the crystal should be more than enough to fuel a quick and link."

"When the time comes," said Li as he looked to Ven\'thur. "I will restore this citadel. You will no more be alone in your stewardship of knowledge. This citadel will be once more a bastion of knowledge, and this time, it will never fall. Consider it a token of gratitude for the servitude to me that you have embraced."

Ven\'thur was surprised and silent for but a moment before he bowed, skeletal hand placed over his purple robed chest. "I would want for nothing more." He rose, then clapped his bony hands together with skeletal clack. Sparks of lavender energy echoed from his fingers, and they gathered in a swirl in front of him, expanding into a portal.

"Good to go home," said Tia. "Was cold. Very cold. When papa gone, could not feel him at all. Gone."

"Tia," said Li as he brought the little girl closer to him, holding her in his arm. "I will be with you always. Sometimes, you may not feel where I am, or I may seem far, far away, but know that distance means nothing to me. In some way, I will be there for you, and you will never be alone."

"I know, papa," said Tia as she put her head on Li\'s chest, feeling the rough leaves of his Grove Mantle item caressing her cheek. "But still get worried, you know?"

"I know." Li put a hand to her head and walked to the portal, Ven\'thur in tow. "Let\'s go home now."

Li was transported first to Ven\'thor underground laboratory in Riviera\'s northside, and from there, he made his way to the Farmer\'s Guild where he bid farewell to Ven\'thur at the entrance. The upper floor of the Farmer\'s Guild still had its lights on despite the fact that by now, it was late into the night and creeping towards dawn.

Sindra was still working, it seemed.

Everyone else had left, for Li had told the farmers to temporarily take residence in nearby inns while they remained open to reservation by coin. He did not have any real guarantee of how long it would take for him to develop his demonrot cure, after all, so he had erred on the safe side and decided he would tell them tomorrow about his success.

It would also give them a day to rest and process the big news that Li was going to be marching west, away from them. He was hopeful they would receive it well, but he knew that no matter the reassurances, no matter how much he told them that his totems would keep their minds safe and the Justicars and Iona would keep their bodies safe, that they would still be wary and afraid.

"Ah, the ferocity of that Feli," said Ven\'thur. "What she cannot show upon the battlefield, she unleashes full force upon paperwork. And sometimes, myself."

"Sometimes, you do seem to be asking for it," said Li, now in his human form but still comfortably holding Tia in his arms. She was snuggled up close to him, her claws digging into his jacket as she settled into a light sleep. "Not that your words are wrong, but the presentation could be touched up a bit."

"Oh, believe me, good seer," said Ven\'thur as he readjusted his top hat and monocle, making sure he was well dressed and in proper and presentable form regardless of the time of day. "I am quite capable of coating my words in sugar and honey. But I will not do so when it is not required. Sindra would much rather hear my words in all their unveiled honesty than to hear my words dance around with wasted movement."

"You do know people well, so I\'ll trust your judgement on that. Take the rest of the night off, Ven\'thur, though I assume you\'ll be holed up reading or researching in that lab of yours, considering you do not need sleep."

"You know me well," laughed Ven\'thur. He sensed Li\'s intentions and nodded. "Then I will be off. Do make sure to give my regards to Sindra and that she should not work her fragile mortal shell so hard."

"Will do."

Li made his way upstairs to the office floor of the Farmer\'s Guild. There were neatly ordered cubicles of wood tapered with vine designed with the kind of corporate efficiency he was familiar with, and in fact, he had been involved with the designing process of the building with Alexei. He hated corporations and all that they had stood for in his past life, but at the least, he could parse what parts of it were usefully efficient in a kind of neutral calculus.

In a larger cubicle at the back lit up by two lantern lights, there was Sindra, her posture still remarkably straight as she sat at her desk, feline pupils narrowed as she pored over a thick sheathe of documents. He was here to simply ask whether she was fine and get a situation of how the guild had been doing with their temporary housing and all.

"Seer," nodded Sindra in recognition before going back to work. Her tone of voice was soft and quiet as she had noticed with a quick glance that Tia was snugly sound asleep in Li\'s arms.

"Sindra," said Li. "It is not too uncommon to see you working so late, but even now? In the midst of all the chaos surrounding the city? You should take a break. Write back home to the north."

Li noted that Sindra paused for a split second from reading her document. "If you do have family or connections up there."

"I never did elaborate on my family," said Sindra.

"And you do not have to now. If you wish to keep it close to your heart, then keep it there."

"Ven\'thur has already made assumptions that are largely true. It is pointless to keep my background hidden. I am from the north, and I do hail from one of the few noble beastman families there, the few that were inducted into citizenship by the Republic."

"And the rest of the beastmen?"

The edge of Sindra\'s lip tugged slightly into a frown. "Relegated to \'citizens\' in the shallowest sense. Isolated into reservations as manual labor."

"If this is a touchy subject, we can avoid it," said Li.

"No, it is not. As much as Ven\'thur would think it so, I am not motivated to learn and work here to escape some form of guilt that I was born with a family name that grants me more status than the rist of my kin. That is out of my control, and so, I do not lose sleep over it. If I did fret over such matters, I would not have enough of my brain to partition to truly important matters. Like this." She tapped the papers in front of her with a slender, claw tipped finger.

"But I will still say now, just as I did when you asked me the first time I expressed a desire to join this guild, that I am still here because I wish to make a difference, and a difference I could not make pushing mundane papers for a city hall of no true substance."

"And because you would never be allowed to move up in the bureaucracy here," said Li as his eyes settled on her feline features.

"Yes, there is only so much a foreign noble name can do," said Sindra. "Though I suppose the Republican conception of \'noble\' is far different than that thought of in Soleil."

She took a document and handed it to Li. "But interestingly, perhaps my name does mean more than I thought."

Li took the paper and read it. It was in Elven script, the letters curlier and wavier and more tightly packed than the scratch-like markings that denoted Soleilan human script.

"Need I recite the letter?" said Sindra.

"No", said Li with a wave of his hand. He scanned the letter.

It was short, but it was important.

An Elven message reaching out for an audience with Li and Sindra.