“If Jerard is a hunter, then Taliya has bigger problems than being desperate enough to send me to rescue you.” Adrianna said. He just needed help focusing on his task. If she wasn’t there, that poor sap would probably still be apologizing to trees. Of course, she hadn’t seen how complainy the group had been before she arrived, so she didn’t think they were terribly annoying at all. In any case, Lionel might not even know Jerard, but Adrianna knew he was quite involved in Taliya’s resistance efforts.

In any case, Adrianna was rather annoyed that Lionel had such little faith in her, and thought that telling the drivers to expect them was a poor idea. Next time she would just let them shoot Lionel when he surprised them. [i]Don’t be like that. Then you’d have to heal him.[/i] 

“Oh look. They didn’t kill us.” Adrianna donned a sarcastic voice after the wagon passed them on the road. “How fortunate we are.” Lionel really brought out the worst of Adrianna’s attitude. She had [i]tried[/i] to be decent towards him, but he was just such an asshole.

“No, but these morons with us are killing me.” Lionel complained.

“We can hear you!” One of the women called out in response.

“Oh, you can do something right? Well done!”

The exchange prompted Adrianna to ask about the people they were leading, though Lionel’s remarks were quite condescending. She frowned at his initial remarks and shook her head. “Every life matters, Lionel. Maybe you don’t think they matter to [b]you,[/b] but that doesn’t make their lives worthless.” She hated to think what he would say about her when she wasn’t around. What’s more, with such a poor attitude, Adrianna couldn’t imagine what she was ever supposed to learn from him.

Lionel went on to tell her about a healer who didn’t know much about plants yet, a guard who lost control of his magic, a teacher, and another guy. Overall, they didn’t sound like bad people, and Adrianna shrugged. “They certainly could be.” She replied at the end, though her tone was genuine. Why Lionel seemed so eager to see all of these people as useless was beyond her. She considered how to challenge Lionel without being driven to apologize to a tree in the process, but Lionel spoke up, about Taliya this time.

She scoffed lightly at Lionel’s remark quoting Taliya, shaking her head in disagreement. That might have been a mantra of the resistance under the old leader, but Taliya was more interested in Magic as a weapon, and anyone who chose not to use it as such was the lesser for it. “I don’t know what you drugged Taliya with to get her to say that. All I’ve heard is, ‘If you aren’t going to help us fight, then get the fuck out of the way.’ ”

Turning to the woman near the back, Adrianna spoke up a bit, walking backwards for a few steps. “Miss, if you are looking to learn more about natural poisons and poisonous plants, there are some books that the healers keep that I am sure they would be willing to share.” She said before smiling brightly at Lionel. “But you also don’t [b]have[/b] to learn how to kill people.” Of course, Taliya would be a little annoyed if the healer stayed in Mutebo and did nothing, but if she was a half-decent healer, she would be accepted. Hell, if she showed up when it was her shift, she would probably be favored over Lionel at the least.