Lionel began to tell Adrianna how much he knew about Midkemia, or rather, he boasted about knowing things without really telling her anything of use. Adrianna’s jaw clenched as he walked around her, and suddenly she found herself realizing that there was no way this man was simply a healer who had worked for the church. He was much to prideful. He much have had some sort of title among them. Was he a hunter? She doubted it. He seemed far too easily distracted for such a task. Perhaps an Acolyte? Some of them could be really uppity.

“I know a bit.” Adrianna said. Lionel told her that she would need gold. She could get that. Healing people, with magic or not, was a profitable job. She could make whatever she needed to secure passage to most places. Even savage cut-throats got hurt sometimes. Taliya chimed in, and told her to bring people, preferably scary looking ones, eliciting a scoff from Adrianna. She wasn’t going to hire bodyguards to get her in to Midkemia. So what if the place was like a giant prison? For all she knew, Finneas was in an actual prison in Midkemia. She hoped that he wasn’t. If he was free, it shouldn’t be too hard to get to him. 

Taliya added that Lionel wouldn’t accompany her and Adrianna nearly snorted. No, she had no desire to continue to work with such a prick. The sooner she got away from him, the better. The latter suggestion was to ask the crazy kids who had been in earlier. “The group with the child, robot, and the woman who refuses to heal injuries? You think they are ‘bad looking fuckers’?” Now that Taliya knew she was a woman, Adrianna didn’t bother to hide her normal intonation, and her voice rose with disbelief as she repeated the suggestion to follow the rag-tag group to Midkemia.

“What the hell does the Church want with them?” Adrianna knew what the Church wanted with her, but they hadn’t seem interested enough to pursue her, at least to the best of her knowledge. On the one hand, she would be putting herself in their line of fire if she joined a group that was being actively pursued by the Church. On the other hand, at least she wouldn’t be putting another group in danger because she chose to travel with them. 

Lionel was easily within distance of her right hook, but Adrianna summoned the willpower of Edos as she resisted the urge to punch him as he got all up in her face. Taliya said he had his own work to do, and a broken nose might just slow him down a bit. “I’ll pass.” Adrianna’s glare carried over to Taliya as the woman suggested she continue to talk with Lionel for more information. She would rather walk into Midkemia blind than have to pay whatever condescending price Lionel demanded for his ‘aid’. So far, he had done nothing but made her life more difficult. 

She didn’t need any extra prompting to leave the room, tightening her grip on her pack as she walked out past Taliya and in front of Lionel as well. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she would take whatever information she could get out of Lionel. If it would help her get Finneas back, she shouldn’t dismiss it right away. At the same time, the rest of her was screaming not to trust this man at all. Leaving the building, Adrianna paused outside, turning around to face Lionel for a moment as she made up her mind about what to say. She had thought she was relatively calm, and could tell the man simply that she didn’t need his help before taking her leave. The smug grin on his face reminded her of her anger, however, and she punched him hard in the face, her knuckles smashing into his cheekbone.

“Good luck finding a healer you haven’t royally screwed.” Adrianna said.  Because even though he seemed to think that she liked just wandering around following people and healing them, she sure as hell wasn’t going to heal up the bruise she just gave him. He ruined things for her here. Yes, she had been keen on leaving, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to have her biggest secret revealed. These were magi, people she might want to depend on in the future, and he had taken that away from her. He had known her for all of a few hours, and he had already demonstrated how useless his information was, and how untrustworthy he was. Acolyte or not, he was a prick who enjoyed keeping secrets and boasting about it. “You seem to enjoy knowing and withholding things from people…so feel free to do that—far away from me.” Adrianna turned on her heel once more and stormed off from Lionel.

It wasn’t until she had put some distance between herself and Lionel, and had some time to calm her nerves, that she thought more seriously about Taliya’s suggestion to go to Midkemia with the strange group she had run into a few times. Were they even going that direction? She said it might take a while, but that would just give Adrianna more time to get information about Midkemia. Besides, she didn’t [i]have[/i] to stay with the group. She could always leave and go her own way…that is, if they would even have her.