Shienvien

The Prophecy

Aemoten

“I guess? I mean there are similarities, at least, but I can’t say for sure whether she’s exactly the same as a lich... I’m not that good.” Olan shrugged. “And it’s not like something is missing from her soul, not like that; to be honest I’m not even sure that I’d be able to tell if her soul had been split. It’s more like, eh... normally a soul kind of looks like its body, right? Because it identifies itself with how it looks physically. But this one, it’s like it isn’t sure what it is. Does that make sense? It has a vague idea of it, but it doesn’t have a fully fledged identity.”
"She has forgotten... Or she never was not just humanoid, but a living being as we know them altogether ... in spite of being mortal? Someone else ... made her?" Aemoten surmised to himself. Those were the only two immediately evident ways he managed to come up with in the way of making sense of everything Olan was saying and he had witnessed. Jaelnec beside him mostly just looked weary, even as this matter - which quite closely pertained to him - was discussed.
“The being in Angora...” Olan begun when the issue that had made Jaelnec's ... "passenger" more relevant than before was addressed again. “No, not malevolent. It doesn’t really feel like anything out of the ordinary, really, just... a blank canvas projecting raw emotion. If it wasn’t latched onto Angora I doubt I’d be able to see it at all.”
That did not help much. Nor was the pain, weariness, or altogether ill mood particularly conductive to effective thinking. But at that point, none of those was anyone particular's fault. Just that of circumstances.

It did not appear like Angora was capable of delivering any overview of the circumstances that led to her being afflicted thusly.
"Go on, then."

He himself and Jaelnec were to be removed from the scenario - for a short while, at least. He did not lead the younger nightwalker in any particular direction, rather just away. Away from Angora's aura, from the others' range of hearing ... he could not feel the aura's influence as others did, but he could feel the distinct pain in his head subside as he put more distance in between himself and the source. It might have not been completely gone by the time he stopped, but at the very least it had become indistinguishable from the background of thirst, exhaustion ... and what was bound to be an actual mild headache. He had barely even realized earlier...
Their camp remained behind his back when he stopped, Angora and the lot by the other edge of it. He did not speak up immediately after halting, but rather stood in silence for a bit, just leaning on the other, head tilted back and eyes closed. Try and clear his head a bit. Maybe he should turn to the One for that purpose, once again after a while of notable amount of stress, but yet not doing so.
"Do you know why the order you're part of is called Order of the Will?" he finally mused. "Willpower, for one, is quite valuable commodity. One that can run out, not unlike physical strength. And much the same, it can be trained... Stretch it just a bit further every subsequent time. But run out of it at an inopportune moment, and the consequences are dire. Convictions get cast aside, principles broken, emotions listened over reason. Wear people down enough, and they'll start acting in ways they never would under normal circumstances. Koraakan knows we have had more than enough thrown at out faces, and no chance to properly recover..."
Pause.
"They also say the sense of futility begets anger. People get angry when things aren't as they'd like, and there is not much they can do to do about it. And that's followed by followed by either hopelessness or acceptance. By this point I would not be surprised if most of us were silently spending up most of our willpower just to not take the head off of anyone who dares look at us wrong." And to think of the fact that they managed to endure several days of her presence not all that long ago... Some of them had even advocated protecting her. "That aura - or whatever that is - is, was not exactly helping, either. That's mostly why I wanted to get away."
Finally, the foreign warrior sighed, lowering his head and opening his eyes.
You can probably guess I'm not too fond of that entity ... who is in your sword, apparently. At least it isn't another demon or devil or some such. But, you saw her," the foreign warrior ever so slightly motioned his head towards where Angora was. Whatever they were doing ... it probably hurt. There were screams. "Doesn't mean it will end well. I think I agree with Thaler - she is not evil. And she probably genuinely wants to help. But back then, I also saw a being - suddenly in your body, no less - who was arrogant, lacking in self-control and all too willing to make decisions over you in your stead - rather poor combination of traits."
A bit too reminiscent of someone else ... it was peculiar how often the opposite sides could end up surprisingly alike.
"She made it very clear that she was both ready and willing to hurt any of us - threatened me, wanted to kill the three-quarter-demon -, but any harm we tried to inflict upon her would just damage you. She is not humanoid - never was -, and cannot comprehend humanoids, of that I'm certain. And quite evidently, she doesn't realize what her attempts at protecting you are doing to you, either.
It doesn't even matter what her intentions were or are - she damaged you shutting you down and taking over back then, and in continuing to do so, she rends your mind apart, bit-by-bit. It might not seem much at first. One thought you can't tell whether is yours or hers, one memory which doesn't have a place in time and keeps intruding the present because for you it never ended... And that's on top of taking control of your body, and thus removing all choice from you. These things will accumulate. Might even explain why she herself doesn't appear to have an identity. Who knows."
Pause.
"If you want to remain, well, you and sane, she cannot be permitted to do that. Furthermore so because there is little predicting what she thinks You said you had heard the voice before, but figured it was just your own subconscious? She has become more active the past few days? Has she done it more than once, are any periods of time missing? Any thoughts or memories you're not sure about? It seemed she had arbitrary access to your memories and feelings while possessing your body ... I presume the opposite is not true - I don't think you should try, though. Not worth it; we have been through enough without any of us willingly sacrificing more pieces of ourselves when it can be avoided."
Too much talking. He thought he could taste more blood than before, and his throat was definitely raw. He should probably find something to drink ... and sit down, unless he wished to continue using Jaelnec as a crutch. As he took a look over his shoulder, trying to seek out suitable source for the first and location for the other, he became aware of the absence of something - or rather someone - who should have been there.

"Where did..." he inquired on reflex, his brow furrowing. It was the first time since parting from the others that his voice was anything but thoughtful. Now that he was actively trying to locate Thaler, it occurred to the warrior that she was not the only one of their numbers who was nowhere to be seen - the injured raven was also no longer on her by now usual perch on Immanuel's donkey's saddle horn. Had she gone along with Thaler? Quite surprising; he would have thought she was now Olan's bird, if anyone's, and that Thaler was a bit apprehensive towards her. "Thaler said she was going to get things ready for when we reach Zerul..." He elaborated, and then paused for a moment, eyes becoming unfocused as he was running the exact scenario through his head once more. "She didn't mean she intended to arrange something in Zerul City, did she?"
For some reason, it did not feel like Thaler would have outright lied to him - Aemoten did not want to believe she would, in any case. She probably did intend to say she is headed to Zerul City. Which meant that she would be trying to travel all the way over there in her current state. No mount, no one who would be able to help her if need be - probably no weapon to defend herself with, either, unless she had also retrieved her sword from the donkey's pack. Not that her current physical condition saw her fit for further combat to begin with. Or even an on-foot trek of that length...
And even if she managed to reach the city - she had never even met William, their designated contact and the person who was supposed to organize their stay. And naturally, she did not even have a token from them, and there were people who might recognize her in an unfavorable fashion... No matter how one looked at it, just hoping she would make it ... no matter one's belief in her abilities, it did not feel like a good idea. The foreign warrior heaved a heavy sigh.

Find a woman you love from the most unexpected of places. Be ready to stand whatever horrors the world had to offer and her, and see her do the same. Discover that the greatest of threats had for a long time been within her instead. Stare your greatest fears in the face and make mistakes. Let the woman you love go just to give her a bit of space. Go bring her back. Fight a deity over her. Dare take a break - or collapse after riding on sheer willpower for too long -, only to find her fending off another threat. Agree that she should not have to deal with the aftermath. And then go after her again. Perhaps this was how it was supposed to go...

"I think I should go after her, just in case," he commented after a couple of moments of thought. "Etakar should be able to take care of us both ... if we don't head back to meet you, just continue to Zerul and we'll meet there. Dou you reckon you can handle things here?"

Domhnall McRaith

It felt almost unbearably long, even though it was not him who was subjected to the treatment. The screams cut though bone, and though Angora was but one and they were several people holding her down, it took significant effort to handle just her closest arm.
His heart was racing, and though he hardly noticed, he was shaking himself, but somewhat unspectedly, one of the savage's cries stood out from the rest.
"Ye... Tha's Rodorian," Domhnall voiced, stating the obvious. "Ye unders'and me?"
His eyes flickered from Angora to Iridiel to Olan. She seemed ... saner? The aura, however, was still there, and her voice, though the words were now comprehendible, still had that unearthly tone.
"It's... We don' mean tae harm ye, ye know, righ'?"

The Prophecy

Still alive.

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From Downfall ReRisen

The Lone Survivor

“If there’s any doubt I’ll just strip them of as many parts as I can safely remove. It shouldn’t be difficult... unless they have some kind of automated defense mechanism, of course.”
"Not unlikely," Notrau muttered. Naturally, he did not really know ... he was no tech. Those folks were semi-safely stowed away, much like the drone-pilots (and would most likely be preemptively shot before they could be taken in by the enemy). The knowledge those people harbored was actually valuable, whereas his was supposed to be strictly limited to which approaches worked for a person of his loadout and which did not. He was equipped to relay information that could be used by drones among others, but as far as his orders in regards to handling them went ... do not touch and do not obstruct. "Make the cut off head bite one more time, yeah?"
What would be the point of making drones explode upon startup, over just destroying them right away? Seemed like an unnecessary additional risk, dallying around for long enough to tamper with one, all the while hoping that it did not turn into an opportunistic mine while you were at it... It made a tremendous amount of sense, that they would implement something of the sort.
“Can you shoot them?" Kay-Gee suddenly inquired. "Is your gun powerful enough for that?”
"Powerful enough?" he repeated, sounding almost incredulous. "At mid-range, it can punch through two and half centimeters of hardened steel, and anything less. Tank, APC, those won't care a bit. A human, a flying drone small enough to navigate these forests with ease, some lighter vehicles and craft... If I hit true, it's got a new hole punched through it." One could doubt the usefulness of wearing armor at all, if it were not for the fact that he knew what being hit did to unarmored targets... And the possibility of using bullets with significantly decreased penetration that were geared towards more extensive damage instead. Overpenetrating projectiles did not necessarily have the most stopping power.
Wearing armor was useful or the sake of everyone's moral state, if not for the innumerable other threats present. Fragments, suppression-fire from lighter weapons, ricochets, sound... And in the end of day, humans could - at least briefly while high on adrenaline and who knew what else - take a surprising amount of abuse before they went down for good. Saw that again just yesterday...
Notrau winced to himself.

A hundred and nine, he idly noted in his head. Some things you eventually learned to know as if by instinct... He suspected that that number might dwindle at a quite uncomfortable rate in the future, with no restocking in sight. Any number was too small if the estimated duration it had to last was "indefinitely".

It was when he had already gotten up to get on moving that Kay-Gee added another disconcerting notion to the mix - though one would be hard pressed to say that it surpassed the sheer lunacy of their little WMD-suicide plan. This one was more personal. This one threatened to strip him of what few belongings he had, and in spite of his insistence that it was not wise to go about looking like a factory-made Anderekian (a disturbingly apt descriptor, perhaps) when he was no longer affiliated with them, going without his armor and the extended senses his helmet anywhere outside his home barracks ... "blind and naked" was probably as close approximation as it got.
Never letting his possessions out of sight (or letting them taken off his person) was probably the best bet he had. Even if it meant he had to sleep atop of his gun and wearing everything. He had halted when Kay had brought the topic up, head halfway turned towards her.
"I used to be a heavy sleeper," he mused audibly. And that had obviously gotten taken advantage of. "I got better."
He turned to face forward again, and began moving forward. He was not marching - it was even, measured strides, not rushed but quicker than the average person's walking. He could probably have kept it up till he either fell asleep mid-motion or passed out from dehydration, whichever happened first.
"And please try not to take my helmet apart ... it's more my eyes than my actual eyes, yeah? Probably quite easy to fuck up, too, get some dust into an otherwise sealed sensor or something... Not even I know how the bloody thing's assembled, but I do know I'd be long deaf without it. And dead. Very, very dead. And it's probably our best chance of picking up others' communications, especially if they just crossed me off, no?" Maybe. At the very least, he was quite certain he was not trackable, or the enemy would have long figured out how to pick them out without line or sight or anything of the sort.
“Also – and I realize that there might be no reason to warn you against this, since it’s pretty much common sense – don’t threaten the others. It’s fine with me, I didn’t really mind, but not everyone’s as reckless as me. At best they’ll refuse to let you stay... at worst, they’ll kill you on the spot.”
"You were alone," Notrau noted, with immediacy and matter-of-factness that suggested that he did not even need to think on the matter. "If it came to firefight, I could probably get away before the rest of your lot showed up. Had I been in the middle of a base, there'd be no getting away before everyone took a shot at me, if it came down to that. I did not know for certain whether that thing of yours could pen my armor, so it was get away without being noticed, or confront and don't get hit, and not knowing how willing you were to draw guns, it was safer bet you wouldn't do so when you'd be certain to be hit first if you tried, yeah? I could last in these woods for a while, probably, but for how long? So I needed to find someone who wasn't definitely hostile. I decided to risk it with you, no shots were fired, so so far, so good."
For a bit, he walked in silence.
"There are still ... customs, yeah? A protocol? Things you talk about, and things you don't ... aside of threatening violence, I mean, since if that is not universal, I don't really know what is. Some chain of command? A person you have to talk to so that they'll maybe talk to a more important person, who will talk to an even more important person, who will maybe be able to contact someone who might actually be able to change something, but most likely won't, and then you'd have to face repercussions for bothering them in the first place?"
He sighed.
"I would not even know where to begin, especially if we're going to go and try make it so that the whole place does not get turned into a smoking crater," he muttered. "I am Enn-Que, bringer of bad news and harbinger of doom. I may have lost the hellbeast I was supposed to ride here, because I'm not too good at this..."

Thunder rolled across the land. Not the thunder or supersonic planes, but that of lightning. It was a common phenomena with sunstorms, along with the sicly-yellow sky, turbulent winds and fell beams of light that could scorch a surface they hit - something the cover of clouds was wont to shield the ground from, though the cover of trees was nearly as effective even on clear days. It was not the worst of them, granted, however it nevertheless remained unpleasant.
But, at least Kay had been right in one thing - most hostile entities were less likely to wander about while it lasted.

The Prophecy

Aemoten

“Not like Usha, no,” Olan confirmed, which was a relief, albeit whether a small or a great one remained unknown for the time being. Koraakan knew even small hindrances stacked up after a while, and this day alone had already thrown more devastation at them than most people had to deal with during their entire lives.
He had seen more than several lifetimes' worth long ago as it were, but with all due respect, he had lived on a farm for most of the years he had spent in Rodoria, only leaving everything behind once there was nothing left for him there, robbed by the infernal plague. He had considered "finding a cure" a quest for the sake of a quest - something to take his mind off the grief and the past, not something he actually expected to succeed, and until he came to be a part of this group, it had been a fairly uneventful endeavor...
Now? He did not know. They had found out something of note, probably, yet with everything irrelevant coming their way and trying to strike them down, their final goal felt perhaps even farther than before. Jaelnec was maybe the one most likely to genuinely believe in their quest - or at least Aemoten assumed he had, in the beginning. There was no telling whether the past week had changed it, and he was not in the mood for asking (nor was it the time). Completely unexpectedly, he had found a person he had fallen in love with, and then a thrice-damned literal devil had shown up...
It would have been all too easy to either just give up altogether or treat everyone and everything that did not immediately comply with indiscriminate rage. He did not even know how much of the inclination for either was indirectly caused by exhaustion and pain anymore..
If Olan was right - and while he still did not quite know how Olan knew things, he usually was - the current situation was, however, most likely not precisely Angora's fault. It could not be excluded that it might have been some dumb decision or another of hers that ultimately brought it upon her, but as a general rule, a person was to be exempted from any responsibility on what they did while possessed, for the simple reason that it was not really them who did it. Would have to figure out how did she become afflicted, though...
And none of it changed the fact that he himself simultaneously wanted to scream and punch a tree, and just drop face down to the ground and stop caring about anything at all.
It had not been the only question he had voiced, though - and much like he had suspected, Olan also had something to comment on the other matter (although the nightwalker was not quite as subtle as the foreign warrior in regards to the individual - or individuals - the question had pertained. “She’s mortal, I can tell you that much. Beyond that... It’s like her soul isn’t fully formed, if that makes any sense. And she isn’t actually in Jaelnec; she’s in his sword.” The outlander sighed.
"It answers at least some questions ... and raises others. Someone put a soul in an object? Does it technically make her a lich, the sword's thus a phylactery? One who is powerful enough to, well, do what we witnessed her do, yet somehow incomplete? Did they split their soul, then?" He guessed even his own sword felt like him after all these years... "...And that thing in Angora - I know it has this aura ... if you can see through it, does it feel malevolent? Do you think you could ask her if she remembers when she became like that?" He shook his head, slowly. "Or, if we have limited time, just hope whatever you want to do works..."
"I apologize," he muttered to Jaelnec beside him. She had last possessed Jaelnec when he was weakened, had she not? And that aura certainly did a number on him... Who knew what their big striped cat thought of him questioning her nature? Now he was once again functioning mostly on the rush of blood. "There is only so long one can walk in the unknown without any consequences..."
She had become unusually active by Jaelnec's admission, just very recently, no? What if she acquired fondness for having a body? Decided that the best way to "protect him" would be to stash him away indefinitely, out of all harm's way? Accidentally merged herself into him like whatever plagued Angora had? There was no predicting half an inhuman mortal that refused to identify itself, and running into another person overtaken by something did not exactly encourage... Better to get further away first. He looked Etakar in the eye - he would take care - and placed a hand on Jaelnec's shoulder.
"Come."

Domhnall McRaith

He looked at Iridiel with puzzlement evident in his expression as she explained that he would need to hold Angora down in order for her to ... do what exactly? Go into her mind? Sulis must have been a versatile deity indeed, though the thought of someone else rummaging around in his head definitely felt a bit odd (but then again, gods were gods, and thus could probably do whatever they damn well pleased, whether or not he wanted it or not ... which was even more of a reason to not needlessly piss them off, and possibly stay out of their attention altogether).
His companion was right, though... What was being said - about that possession thing and the whole lot - made sense. And helping with holding him down ... sure, he could do that. He nodded slowly at the éireann woman, and cast his eyes up at Olan and the stern foreign warrior who was commenting something to his squire, and then proceeded to have a short and perplexing conversation with the older black-eyes.("Usha"? Liches? Just who in the planes were those people?)
"He is asking what are you going to do," he noted to Iridiel, switching to Rodorian right after. "She is ... goin' to separa'e her and the thing in her - make an attemp' to, the leas', from what I unders'and." And back to his native... "Try to separate them ... yes? He says just go on if there is limited time..."

The Prophecy

service Shienvien status
Loaded: Loaded /
Status: Active (running since 01:32 28.10.2016)
Operating at: 63% efficiency
Available time: -1
Currently working on: tea, restructuring a program due to input changes
Estimated time left: -1
Docs: Not available

The Prophecy

Mostly Legion's turn, I think. I might continue the conversation a bit write a short post from Domhnall's perspective if I have the mental energy left over for it, but I would not say I'm due a post as it were, more that it's not impossible for me to post.

Mahz's Dev Journal

IP filtering can be very useful, but more often than not it handles ports, or letting only a single server/node with a specific static IP address to access a service, or only your intranet (devices that are connected to your local, non-public net), or...
IP bans for public websites, especially if the IPs under question belong to public leased ranges, are generally pointless and usually harm lawful users.

IP addresses are not set, and can be very easily changed to almost any currently available number. Even if you don't knowingly IP-hop, your IP address will most likely not stay for very long, since your address doesn't typically "belong" to you - it's leased; static IP addresses are something you pay your net provider extra, and you generally don't want one unless you have a server to host. (By default, whenever you connect to wifi after being disconnected for a bit - or when the old IP address expires -, your computer will go "Hey, DHCP, I need an IP address to talk to the net!". And the DHCP will give you a random currently free one.) And it's leased from a company - some range of IP addresses will be clients of a net provider, another to an university, etc. Oh, and a single IP address can mean thousands of simultaneous devices (due to different NATs).
In the end, banning a non-static IP will mean that whoever currently has the IP will not be able to access - and with larger leasers, it just about might be that you might have made half a million people play a roulette of who gets the bad one. Which is not particularly effective by any stretch of the imagination. And if you get an unit with one static public IP for everyone, you now have punished a hundred, thousand, ... people at once.

So ... yeah. It might be worth banning the static IP of a particularly troublesome server for a set amount of time (surprise-surprise, a server might decide to hop IPs, too, especially if too many places have banned them, and then the IP goes back into the pool). The IP leased to some random home PC? Never worth banning.

Ehh... Sure, we could follow the bots' IP addresses for a bit, see whether they map back to a server pretending to be many people, or some subset with a common public IP, but if it is paid "human bots", or infected computers, or anything of the sort, that'll lead nowhere.

The Prophecy

Aemoten

“The woman is angry with me, I learned a long time ago not to trust people angry with me. Especially with my health.”
Angry? Irritated at Thaler, maybe, if her shouting earlier was any indication... But not vengefully angry. Iridiel did not come across as the kind of person who would harm a living being purely out of spite - and if Sulis was anything like Reina or some such benevolent deity, then any favored of hers who inflicted senseless suffering would furthermore risk having one's powers revoked.
She had healed Etakar, despite him being a foreign beast who could easily crush her torso in a single hand if he only so desired; she had offered to heal him, in spite of him being no more than a complete stranger who stumbled across her when she appeared to be trying to recover herself, and now she was lending her goddess' power to heal an individual she has only a minute ago been ready to kill, and who had all but told her outright she had intended to kill her first... Healer first and foremost. Not a threat, or at least so his instincts - gut feeling, if one so desired - insisted. And in things like that, he was typically not wrong. Sometimes regrettably, as the happenings which had ensued after he had recognized the three-quarter-devil as trouble demonstrated. But the opposite was presumably true, too, and at some point their exceptionally bad luck had to run out.
Besides, even his feelings as a human man left aside - aside of it simply being painful to see a person he loved injured and hurting -, it was a matter of pure practicality. Where the man lamented over suffering, the warrior saw loss of function. Broken people could not go on, injured individuals made poor fighters, strength and willpower alike were resources, and could be depleted... Staying in a severely weakened state when amending the situation was both easily and quickly doable was not only pointless, it was actively harmful.
He guessed he would have to talk to Iridiel separately afterwards ... sort out the misunderstanding, if there even was one to speak of, explain there was no foul blood... That there was still an ounce of good left in people... That every now and then, there still were other options than either sacrifice or gritting one's teeth and enduring... People could not go on on their own indefinitely. Koraakan knew he would not have gotten this far if he were continuing on a solitary path, not with everything thrown his way...
But first things first. Figure out what to do with the woman... “And be careful.”

I shall try, Thaler. I shall try...

The outlander's expression, however, did not change as he stared down at their prone detainee, the worst of her visible injuries gone, but her skin still covered in her own and - Aemoten suspected - Thaler's blood, a slight notch left behind in her ear where the daywalker had bit her in her frustration. The male foreigner leaned closer to his companion, sheathing his knife and whispering something to her. Iridiel nodded, replying something in her own tongue, all the while the young squire beside him seemed to recollect himself and relayed the exact apparent effects of the stranger's aura on him.
"I see," he thoughtfully remarked to the younger nightwalker as he watched the brown-and-green-skinned man listen to Iridiel's words with puzzlement evident on his face, eyebrows furrowed.
Inconvenient as the aura's effect was, the warrior supposed it was actually preferable to an effect that would make people instinctively like her... Assuming that it felt the same to everyone, and did not depend on the woman's attitude towards any particular subject, or her current mood. Fear was doubtlessly an unpleasant and undesirable sensation that could divide men and women fighting for a singular cause - it could be crippling, even, but in a sense it was more honest. Unwarranted fondness was often more devious, as recent experiences had shown. Induced fear was more easily recognized for what it was, and more commonly resisted...
What Olan was saying, however, was perhaps of even more interest, even though even he did not seem to have a too good understanding of what they had at hand. “It’s not a demon or an angel, I can tell that much, but... it’s weird. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like it is her, but it’s also in her. Like... a parasite, maybe.”
"So not like Usha...? She is an actual human affected by something else?"
Koraakan knew they did not need another entity like she had been. Not mortal, not divine, not infernal, the bloody hell else it was? Although ... they had yet another entity somewhere among their ranks who was quite capable of commandeering at least Jaelnec at will ... who had furthermore both made an indirect threat on her host's and his own life alike, and had refused to properly identify herself. Thaler believed in her benevolence, on grounds he could not quite comprehend, but not even Jaelnec himself had any knowledge of her nature ... or even of her presence before she evidently decided he was free to be puppeteered. It only occurred to him now that Olan had not only been present both for their discussion over the matter and the actual act of possession, but also been the person who sealed the entity with but a single word.
"Or ... her? The one who Thaler compared to a mother tigress? Do you know who or what she is?" If they could at least get answer to one question...
When Iridiel spoke to Olan directly, rather than only at her companion (who, still appearing a bit confused, nevertheless nodded slowly to her words), and Olan subsequently turned to Angora, claiming Iridiel was going to help her, though it could end up being unpleasant, it gave the foreign warrior a pause.
"What do you intend to do?" he inquired, addressing it at the woman ... though the male beside him repeated it to her in their shared language, for obvious reasons.

The Prophecy

There, I and Legion posted. (Into the accidental empty post a bit ago.) Next is Jack, I believe?