"What I wanted to talk with you about is my recent findings. Continuing from our discussion earlier, you know that in my youth I searched for some remnants of what could be my fathers' abandoned races. Nothing was to be found."
Stare blinked at him blandly, but slowly nodded.
He accepted it with another nod of his own.
"After a large lack of success I gave up. Until I met you," he gestured at her. "That inspired me to go look for other possibilities, and I believe ... Well I may have found another."
Suddenly the issue with Blaze was forgotten. Stare looked up with surprise, right into his eyes.
"What?"
He inclined his head. "Exactly, my dear. Now. See here," and this time she followed his hand to the map. His finger elegantly pointed to an area of vast wilderness, tucked into the wilds of the Tular Plains. That area of vast forest and wasteland that made up the scattered demon lands. Vampire lords reigned there, with ancient castles and hungry servants. Guardians, from the beginnings of time, dwelt near the entrances to the hells and all over there were whispers, uncertainties, rumours.
Screams.
"Here is where a few stories accumulate, and not ones that I needed to sort through ancient texts for. Rather, I have found that around twenty years ago a race of strange beasts suddenly appeared, without any warning and with no clear sign of where they came from."
Stare's eyes widened and her brow rose. Certainly it sounded like evidence of Ansaldo sending a discarded, wanted people away.
"What stories?" she asked.
Vitruvion moved his hand back and slid it to pause by a pile of papers - some more ragged and thicker than others. "Reports mostly. One local census tries to accumulate them into it, just after they arrive. A travel journal entry of a human who, unsurprisingly as he went to Tular, died."
She nodded slowly, a million questions rising to her beak. Gone were her concerns over Blaze - the Hollow was something she could never solely rid the world of. Even if she could Vitruvion would always have a being from it that was his - her.
"What did they look like?"
"The stories differ," Vitruvion admitted, sitting back, "But 'beasts' seems to be the central word. Rather than 'being'. Supposedly barbaric then can be deduced, attempts to communicate them were ... Difficult."
