Faces rushed past Lucie as she rushed through the dark alleyways and streets of Prague. She paid attention to none of them, and kept her head low so as to not be seen herself. Diana’s uniform still clung to her, and her hair was still done up like one would expect a nurse to be, but even with a functioning disguise chances were not to be taken. If but one person saw her and recognised who she truly was, a great many things would go wrong. It was for this reason that she took the slower routes; avoiding the main thoroughfares and faster roads, in favour of the places where she would remain unseen by most. Under normal circumstances the small ways would have been the faster route, but she knew that those were watched by people she did not care to meet again. And so she was forced to take the truly abandoned ways to avoid the hubs and gathering points of the less scrupulous members of society. An urchin followed her with his eyes as she walked past the boxes he sat on, eyeing her curiously. She stopped by him, and keeping her eyes trained forward so he only got a vague profile of her, asked, “where are they looking?” The urchin sniffed, and opened his mouth to utter something obviously self-important, but the flash of the sun hitting a silver coin silenced him. “Noon, wheat, and Sun-Up,” he said and grabbed the coin from her hand. A muttered thanks, and Lucie was off again. ‘Noon’ and ‘Sun-Up’ meant two things respectively. Noon always referred to the Prague Orloj, or the astronomical clock tower, Sun-Up was east, and Wheat meant a bakery. Together, it told her where the next checkpoint was. In this case, it was east of the Orloj, by a bakery. There was only one such place, so she knew to avoid it. She kept her head down and continued on her way. It wasn’t long before she found herself past the checkpoint, and with relatively free reign to continue. She paused in the shadows underneath an old, gothic bell tower, intent on getting her bearings. It was a relatively simple matter to gain access and climb up to get a vantage point. A few words here, a coin to beggar there, and she had a distracted steward whom she slipped past, and then up the stairs and all the way to the attic, and even amidst the rafters. She didn’t dare risk climbing out onto the roof, fearing unnecessary questions, but fortunately the view was enough. She found a relatively secure nook to sit in, and closed her eyes to concentrate. While it might not be necessary to be at a vantage point, it helped her to concentrate and center herself for what she was about to do. While she most often used physical contact, such was not actually necessary for her talent to function. She could look at any object, [i]connect[/i] to it in a fashion, and glean information from if she so desired, guided by her own intent and inquiries. The human mind wasn’t entirely isolated within the skull of a person, nor were humans and animals the only things which had minds. Every rock, every tree, and whatever else inbetween, had a mind—a presence—in the world, and as such carried with it wisps of anything and everything it had come into contact with. Lucie’s talent was in finding these wisps, and plucking out individual threads of information, in the grand web that was the world. Any intelligent mind was guarded against unwanted intrusion, whether deliberate or not, and so there she required physical contact. But a stone? A piece of wood? They had no such protections. But what was a stone but a collection of pebbles yet broken apart? A stick other than a shattered piece of a tree? She could see the wisps connected to and from a puzzle, despite it being made up of several different pieces, for it was a [i]whole[/i] despite being multiple pieces. By that logic, what difference was a city? Air filled her lungs, and she held her breath as she let her mind open, and with a deep exhalation, reached out for the threads that would connect her to Olivia. Babaroga’s teeth tore at her mind. A startled scream escaped her lips and the air was knocked from her lungs before she even registered a falling sensation. [hr] Lucie awoke with a start, panting and with the distinct feeling of cold sweat, with a single spot of warmth on her forehead. Before she managed to regain complex thought, instinct kicked in and she performed a quick inspection of herself. Sore, several bumps and bruises she knew would make themselves known to her in the morrow, and a small cut just below her hairline, which also caused the warmth: Her own blood. Blinking the figurative stars away she gave her surroundings a quick look. She had fallen from the rafters, hitting her head on the way down, and landed squarely on her back, and was knocked momentarily unconscious. Judging by the light still shining through the small windows she hadn’t been out for any significant length of time, a few minutes at best. She sat up with some small effort and a groan, wiping her forehead. “Lesson learned,” she muttered, “don’t use it on a whole city.” In the past she had never sought to glean information from anything larger than a single street. She hadn’t even guessed that there would be a limit to how large a thing she could connect to. Was there a limit? Never before had she felt resistance when asking about anything from any object, or any person, no matter how large, old, or complex. Was it just because she had never approached her limit, and now far overstepped it by accident, or was there some other cause? She stood up and resolved to find questions for those answers later. For now, she had a girl to find. She knew there was a connection to some mansion on the east side of the city, but beyond that she had no clue, and she was unlikely to gain anymore until she reached the mansion, as her most recent attempt at pinpointing her location proved. She counted herself fortunate that the beggar had remained his word, and kept the steward busy for as long as they could. Otherwise she would likely have been found when her body had dropped to the attic floor. She sacrificed her second glove to wipe the blood from her face, and was once again on her way, headed eastwards. [hr] About an hour later, Lucie found herself outside of the city proper, now walking across old, beaten paths, rather than cobbled streets. She had acquired a cloak since the bell tower, trading it for a few coins with a traveller—She feared that walking about in a nurse’s uniform would attract too much attention. A lone wanderer still attracted attention, but there were very few hiding places nearby, and though she could hide part of the way, more questions would be raised if someone saw her appearing from hiding, than if she just kept walking. So she trudged along, keeping her head down and her senses sharp. She passed a few farmsteads, sharing a quick greeting with the farmhands that happened to trudge along. This far out, she was expecting Adam and Lillian to show up soon. She might be able to outrun them in the city, but out here horses and wheels reigned supreme. She directed her talent at the road underneath her, and queried the direction towards a grand building, all the while paying careful attention to whether she strained her skills or not. Straight ahead, it told her effortlessly. No stress, or difficulty. She was still able to locate the mansion, it seemed—or at least something akin to it—but that raised the question of what the feedback earlier had been caused by. Was it truly just the size of the area she tried to affect, or was the mansion itself protected in a fashion? Her previous attempt had been focused on the girl’s precise location, so if the mansion was protected to keep people from seeing inside, that would explain that. At the same time, her inquiries in the room she stayed in were directed at where the girl disappeared [i]to[/i]. Again, the general location, an area, not as precise a query as the one that had knocked her from the rafters, but also relatively small in scope: She had merely searched the room for the location the occupant went to when disappearing—remarkably smaller than the entire city, after all. She contemplated making another attempt, but thought better of it. If she feared her being alone would attract attention, then a lone stranger falling over would doubly so. So she instead hurried along, heading towards the old mansion, and hoping Adam and Lillian would soon catch up to her. A knot in her stomach had her hesitate to continue on entirely on her own. There were too many variables for her liking. A girl that vanished seemingly without trace, imaginary friends, difficulty detecting [i]where[/i] the girl was, and then the possibility of protections of an arcane nature. She was no slouch in the mental department, but prideful as she were, even Lucie conceded that Adam’s mind was needed here.