Elayra returned Ghent’s look with a glare in a silent, ‘I fixed it, didn’t I?’ Despite Ghent’s whining complaint about the restriction, her shoulders relaxed in her own relieved exhale. The change in topic took.
	Still standing, Drust watched Ghent for a moment as the boy returned to the fire. With a heavy sigh, he stepped to his spot on the grass. He glanced to Elayra, his gaze settling on the discarded waterskin, its top unstoppered. He gave an approving nod, Ghent’s treasonous chocolate snatching going unnoticed as the man sat.
	Another silence fell, leaving only the flames to speak in their ancient crepitating language. Elayra glanced to Ghent, the Wonderlanders awaiting another round of questions that never came.
	Elayra’s eyebrows rose when, instead, he declared he was going to get to work. She snorted. If she had known all it would take to shut him up was a limitation to his questions, she would have said something sooner.
	Drust looked from the fire to the boy as Ghent turned. “Leave it sheathed. Your goal tonight is to connect with it. Not run one of us through.”
	Elayra smirked. Even Drust did not trust Ghent with the staff.
	“The palace is more west of here, not south,” Elayra began, looking to Drust, eager to turn her attention to something else for fear idiocy was contagious. “So where are we going?”
	“Gardale,” Drust answered without looking from the fire. “A town a few miles from Hollow Forest,” he added for Ghent’s sake. “He’ll need clothes to better fit in here. In case we encounter any omitten.”
	Elayra frowned at his unsatisfactory answer. “Great. But what’s the plan? Are we going hunt after [i]her[/i] or not?”
	Drust sneered. “To think I was worried you’d gained some sense. Only a fool would go after her unprepared, girl. You know this,” his gaze bore into her as unnervingly hard as his voice.
	Elayra swallowed and looked back to the fire. She poked her stick at its heart, but with less vigor than before.
	“I didn’t mean it like that,” she grumbled. She pulled the stick from the heat, watching a small lick of fire lap at the charred wood of its end.
	Drust sighed, watching her. He took a breath, his words less harsh when he spoke again. “We’re going to pay Caervolus a visit. He’ll know the best method to bring her down.”
	Elayra gawked at him, the flame at the end of her stick momentarily forgotten. “We’re [i]what?[/i]”
	“There’s a Rabbit Hole in the town that will take us to Mushroom Gorge,” he continued, his voice a bit stiffer and his neck twitching in acknowledgement of Elayra’s interruption. “As long as the White Rabbits didn’t change it before they vanished,” he added through a frustrated, growling sigh. “It’s one of the few not protected by [i]her[/i] guard.”
	[i]Because it’s in the middle of a forsaken-filled town![/i] she screamed mentally. She managed to keep her mouth shut, instead running her free hand over her face. Remembering the flame eating down her stick, she hastily blew it out.