Real Answers

"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!" John cried out and openly shoved his palms into the air between them. He held his hands up in surrender as high as he could get them and watched as Cassandra slowly started to cover the distance between them. He watched her as carefully as he could, eyeing the way she palmed the air at her waist and the hilt of a blade suddenly appeared in her grasp. She didn't draw it, but she didn't let it go either. She just kept it at her side and at the ready.

There were no other sounds throughout the whole barrier. The rest of the city was quiet and almost deadly silent as John tried to move to a spot where he might have had some cover if she chose to attack him. He watched as Cassandra stepped over broken, rusted old vehicles; she moved past things that looked like they had been crushed and left lying in the street for hundreds of years! Yet, she wasn't the only one moving, John realized. After a couple moments of silence, other people started to step out of nearby buildings and narrow alleyways. They appeared without even making a noise or breaking the deathly silence that had suddenly captured the whole town. The air grew thin around them as the barrier finished forming, and everybody started to breathe deeper and deeper just to try and get some measure of oxygen within the dry, barren city limits, but they didn't speak. John could just see their chests heaving higher and higher with each breath.

John didn't recognize most of the people he saw. Many of them were just strangers and students, or soldiers who were wearing the Frozen Flame's familiar military uniforms. Many of them were dressed all in black, with large, powerful rifles hanging from straps that were wrapped around their chests or shoulders, but all of the soldiers were identifiably female. John had still not seen a single man in the Frozen Flame's group so far. There were a few people he did recognize when they finally stepped out of the shadows, and of course, almost all of them were dangerously focused upon John when they saw him, but none of them were men either.

The first and most prominent sight that John noticed was Moira. The redhead paladin was back again, dressed in another suit of glamorous paladin armor, only it wasn't the traditional suit he had seen her in before. This time, Moira wasn't covered in layer after layer of silver and gold armor, it was just golden. The shiny, metal plating she had covered herself with this time was thicker than what she had used before for normal battle gear, and it looked like she had to try a little harder to move around with it all on, but she didn't bother trying to take it off.

The Lady's Justice!
Choroid-resin Coated Armor - Legendary Artifact
At the request of its wearer, experts of divine magic and expert metallurgy have been used to alter this once standard set of paladin’s armor, coating it in a resin made from the alchemical ingredients harvested directly from a hundred different Mana starved monsters. While wearing this expensive set of enchanted armor, the user gains a variety of useful benefits, all dedicated to assisting in the fight against rogue mages.
+100 Health
+5 to all Stats
+Aura of Convergence

Aura of Convergence. level ??, No MP.
Aura of Convergence: This specific aura radiates out around the Warden on a truly holy level, covering a complete distance of 100 hundred feet. While within this powerful, divine radius, any and all magical spells used in an attempt to flee from the Warden are immediately nullified. Trying to physically run away from the warden as a mage immediately halves the movement speed of any fleeing mage. You aren't getting away.

Retreating to his kingdom actually wasn't an option anymore, according to his Observe ability. The most he could actually do was fight back or try to talk his way out of it. Naturally, he chose the latter of the two options.

"I wasn't trying to steal from you, honestly!" John cried and watched as yet another familiar figure stepped out, this time from somewhere behind him. He wasn't sure of her name or where she was actually from, but he did recognize her.

It was the same blonde woman who had nearly crushed him while he had been hiding in a locker at the school. Like Cassandra, she was also wearing the exact same battle outfit she had had on when he first saw her. Her long, golden, choppy Mohawk had been allowed to grow out and actually reached all the way down to her shoulders. Her hair hung down over one side of her head and obscured part of her tattoo covered scalp from John's gaze, but she made sure to brush stray locks out of her vision and kept her face nice and clear. She glared at him openly with bright, amber colored eyes, and with her normal arm, she pulled her long, fur lined coat a little bit tighter around her muscular form when John stared at her. In her other iron, mechanical grip, she held her hammer aloft, which was now completely visible to John. The giant war hammer was only a couple of feet shorter than John. On the back of the hammer's head rested a small engine and a single, small conical thruster to help propel the weapon forwards. On the weapon's front was an entire canvas of various, intricate runes that had all been carefully etched into the largest and most deadly part of her hammer. The numerous carvings were almost perfectly traced into the actual metal of the weapon, each line measured out with **** precision, and then filled and covered with a glossy, crystal-like alloy.

Her hammer hummed, flaring a gentle blue flame from the back of it's only thruster, as she carefully stepped around John. Her fingers subtly tested the large, hand-length trigger that had been inserted halfway up into the weapon's handle while she and Cassandra both simultaneously flanked him. Her toned body practically rolled as she sauntered around him, slowly and sensually writhing with each swaying step until every last ridge of bared, tanned muscle had been caught and exposed by the sun's smoky light. She tensed, as she felt John's eyes lingering on her, and the rolled up sleeves of her coat grew surprisingly taut around the various widths of her different biceps. She readied herself for whatever tricks the 'thief' might try... but she didn't try to back away from him or even hide the amount of skin that was left visible beneath the flaps of her long coat. She still had her familiar, dark cargo pants on and strapped tightly to her thick, powerful thighs, but above that she wore almost nothing. Her top was deliberately chosen to remain as small and as sequestered as possible. The small, tightly bound straps of cloth she had wrapped around her chest worked like a homemade push-up bra and only covered up what was necessary and appropriate to hide. It squeezed her ample breasts together within a tight bundle, a bundle that was intentionally tied to keep the straps of her top as far away from her shoulders as possible so it wouldn't reach up far enough to touch the point where the mechanical parts of her arm and her body had connected.

Robyn Braxton
Level 15 Barbarian
<Bluebird>
556/556 HP
RP: -142
Effects: Artificial Body, Capped Strength, Totem Of The Hawk.

"Really...?" Her voice was still just as deep and as firm as it had been on the first day that John had seen her. She spoke with a tone that practically bled with her skepticism, but she didn't act upon her doubts. Mostly, she didn't attack him because both Moira and Cassandra raised a hand to stop her. Robyn was clearly **** to follow their lead, she even hesitated at their orders, but she did eventually listen regardless of what she wanted to do. She stepped back, just far enough to stay out of John's reach while she let him finish talking.

"Ye-yes! Taking the Arcana for myself was not my intention!" Both Cassandra and Robyn jerked in place as John spoke, their eyes flickering and twitching as they shared a glance between each other, but they didn't say anything. "I wasn't trying to steal from you or-or fight you! I just wanted to know what you were writing about me!" he paused as, once again, a flicker of confusion passed between the two women. Their brows furrowed, and they simultaneously shifted, passing the weight of their bodies back and forth between their feet. "I wanted to kn-know if I was in danger..." That drew a huff and a chuckle from Robyn. She cocked an eyebrow at John as he finished speaking while Cassandra blushed and blinked hard at him.

"Why... would that tell you if you were in danger?" Cassandra asked, and her hand slowly left her sword.

"I-I wanted to see what it was that you knew about my powers. You were writing so much and ask... asking about me, I was worried that you might tell people, that the rest of the world might find out..." John said, and everyone stopped slowly surrounding him.

"Gaia wouldn't allow people to out magic like that... Did you not grow up in the abyss?" It was Robyn who spoke up this time, her own brow furrowing in confusion as her fingers lifted off of her hammer's trigger and she stared at John. John merely stared back, mouthing the name Gaia in confusion. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Cassandra interrupted her before she could.

"Wait, your powers? What gave you that idea?" she said and watched as John spun to directly face the Artificer. "I didn't know about your powers until you stole the book from me."

"...What?" John swallowed dryly, his throat struggling to work as he slowly looked back and forth between Cassandra and the rest of the group. He could see them starting to move again, circling to create some kind of formation around him, but he didn't bother trying to move with them. He was too stunned to try. "Th-that doesn't make sense... if you weren't the one to discover my powers, then who did?" John's brow gradually knit tighter and tighter as he stood there. His face slowly scrunched up in bewilderment as his mind struggled to race for answers.

It could have been Wentworth. She had seemed to know not only about his powers but also what he had been searching for. Only... the quest he had received to search for evidence hadn't been turned in when he had talked with his teacher. His quest finished when he had found the book... Cassandra's book, and Wentworth had even helped to direct him right to it. It all only made it that much more confusing to John. If Cassandra hadn't known about his powers, then what had she been writing about when she said she had followed him and she said that she saw what he could do? His quests had told him that someone knew about his powers, and if that was true and the book was somehow evidence...

... then maybe it was less about the owner of the book and, more importantly, it could have been about one of many names that had been written inside of it. The person who knew about his powers had to be listed inside the Arcana Iglaciem.

"No, I'll tell you what doesn't make sense..." Robyn shook her head as she spoke, lifting her hammer up over one of her shoulders with just her metal arm. "If you really wanted to convince us that you weren't trying to steal the book, then why did you bother pulling us into a trap barrier?" Robyn said, and John blinked.

"He didn't do this." It was Moira who finally interjected in the conversation. Like John, Moira and the rest of the people around him started to look at each other out of confusion. Most turned to face the warden as she talked, directing their suspicious looks and thoughts at her for the moment. "Opening a barrier like this in the middle of a crowd without pulling any civilians into it? That takes a lot of power and precision, power that John-"

"-doesn't have," Cassandra interrupted and finished her sentence. Her long, flowing white hair started to settle and calm as they looked over at John and he blinked at them. "Doing something l-like this would... It would need a fate-"

"A fateweaver!" None of the women spoke up this time. None of the soldiers or other people that John didn't recognize said anything, because frankly, the random soldiers weren't there anymore. It was just John, Moira, Cassandra, and Robyn. The others all just... disappeared at the press of a button. "...or at least the next best thing." Instead, the owner of this new voice chuckled as the stranger spoke and walked towards the group. In one giant meaty hand, the stranger dragged the limp, beaten form of a young, brunet man along behind them. The victim of the attack didn't even move as his feet scraped along the ground, his black, oil stained jeans loudly tearing and shredding on the concrete as his captor moved him. A jumble of various tools jangled and fell out of the utility belt that had been strapped around his waist, some of which John had never even seen before, while other tools simply got stuck and caught on the scraps of what was left of the victim's red shirt. A simple, red cap slowly slipped and fell from the victim's head as they moved, tugging a scrunched up, crooked cigarette that was tucked behind his ear along with it. John couldn't even recognize the young man, every distinguishing part of his face was swollen and bruised, beaten and disfigured until he was long past the point where he no longer could have been identified.

Actually, the only sign that John had that the young man might have still been alive was the fact that he let out a weak, thready groan right before his captor simply threw him against the walls of one of the nearby buildings. His limp form slapped against one of the dry, cracked, brick walls before he fell, unmoving, to the ground beside the building. John could have tried to identify him, if he hadn't been so distracted, but he didn't use Observe on him. He was too focused on the person walking forward, cracking their knuckles as they led another group of fighters into the fray. John locked eyes with the beaten man's captor and watched as he muttered out a small, sheepish apology for all of the confusion.

"...That was all me," Michel said, and stared right at John.