[center][h2]Anne Mayer[/h2][h3]??? — Hunter's Lodge[/h3][/center]
"Alvin, wait—"

Anne reached out for the fleeing boy, but her fingers slipped as a ragged cough forced its way out of her lungs. Red flecks of blood stained the floor in front of her, and her vision briefly blurred, Alvin becoming a dark smudge of motion she could hardly keep track of. "—Damn it. Can anyone follow him?" The hunters, the guards, they must have seen. Surely one of them would at least keep an eye on the kid, and make sure he got back safely?

She'd have to hope so, because she wasn't in any state to run around, and her face was probably the last one Alvin would want to see right now. She could only stay close to Millie, breathing heavily as her vision returned to her, and wait until Remilia arrived to offer a healing hand through her blood-based paranormal power. As expected, she could only do so much, but Anne was visibly thankful nonetheless. By the end of the process her breaths had eased, and she looked more relaxed than at any point since she'd arrived on this distant world.

"That's a useful ability you've got there. It's like Kasim's..." Her tired eyes watched for any reaction to the name, but Remilia didn't seem to recognize it in the slightest. "...Never mind. I'll manage over here; you should go and help the others."

The minor exchange more or less confirmed what she'd overheard from the others' discussion: that these travelers weren't just from the far-off reaches of known space, but from outside her civilization entirely. The concept defied everything she knew, but that was the reality... And it only weighed her down with fresh feelings of hopelessness, as the impossibility of returning became clear. There would be no ships flying in to rescue her, and no method of communication with enough range to reach Aegis from wherever she was now. Her only bet was to rely on the same mysterious entity that had transported her here in the first place, an entity she still hardly knew anything about.

Exhaustion crept up on her, and without any remaining strength or reason to resist, her thoughts soon faded away into the dark of the rainy night.
[hr]
By the time she woke up, the others were already gathering. With Millie still just as soundly asleep as she had been the evening before, Anne left the girl where she was, and ambled up to the rest of the gang of otherworldly strangers as they eavesdropped on the hunters' conversation. They still had no other leads left to go on, and it made sense that the proactive types among them would want to jump on solving this problem, but Anne herself was of two minds about it.

"Hold on." She held up a hand, her tone soft but firm. Though still a little pale, she seemed to be in better shape now that she had been even back at the church. "It'd be good for us to assist if we can, but we shouldn't rule out the possibility of another Herald attack either. And it's not like we need everyone just to chase off a few scavengers." She was still worried about Alvin, and even with her partial recovery she wasn't keen on the idea of trekking about in the forest all day. "Those of us who're less mobile in this terrain should probably stay behind and keep an eye on the village. Myself, Lily... One other would be good, but the two of us can probably hold the line ourselves if it comes to it."

[@PKMNB0Y][@VitaVitaAR][@DracoLunaris][@EchoWolff][@Lugubrious]