It took a sizable amount of time for him to answer.

A worryingly sizable amount of time.

Philomel's brow furrowed again, deeper this time.

But then, suddenly he spoke. And things were going.

“I concur with the plan. We’ll use the festival as cover, find a Geiko to send to Lye as a ‘gift’ from Akashima and sail from Yanbo harbour as soon as time allows. Lillith; I have a question. You teleported here, presumably from quite a distance? What prevents you from teleporting us to the Seventh Sanctum, exactly? That would be much easier.”

A sigh expelled from the faun's lips as she was filled with good feelings again. Finally, he was back from his silence. She did not like him being silent, apparently. It reminded her too much of his potential death. One more friend dead was another pain to bear.

"Don’t you think I would have if I could?" Lillith said a little haughtily, "I can only take us to places the troupe have been.”

“Fair enough," the Telgradian replied in a calm, serene tone. "Then can you get us to Akashima?”

“Easily.”

"Good. “Then we have an accord. Let’s give ourselves thirty minutes to gather anything we may need, get Delath, Veridian and," he looked at Philomel, then down at where Mao had left a fine round dry ball on the top of a map of the Scara Brae islands. Smiling quickly Philomel quickly flashed a hand at it and it was gone. "Erm ... your rabbit fed, go for a piss and get something quick to eat ourselves. We have a long night’s work ahead of us.”

"Of course," the faun continued the grin and scooped Mao up with one hand, wanting not to seem apologetic for pride reasons but also fighting to not let it show.

Half an hour later they were all in the Akasiman capital city.