Veiled under the dark sky and with only the bonfire's light to illuminate the intruders, Liadan at first, mistook the attacker for another human. The one with a dagger next to Ogda's neck had thin, bony arms, veiled by grey fabrics and straps. A leather armor covered his chest and torso. But then she noticed his legs, which bent forward at the knees, and while the exposed skin glittered in the sunlight. And the helmet on his face was elongated like a beak of a bird.
His associates, hidden under the night's cover, were probably similar to him, or at least that's what Liadan's hunches told her. She got her answer the moment the one with the chains made them disappear in thin air.
-" Goidel, let's mind our manners first and properly greet these strangers", proposed the feline helmeted warrior. "Also remember to put your weapon away this time." He was the shortest of three, but wider in frame and had a puffy, short tail, at which the duo had the same, secret reaction; "Cute."
After the remark, the beaked attacker changed his stance as easily as one changes socks and mellowed out instantly. The aggressive pupil in his eyes turned to a relaxed oval, but his tone was a fast one, like one of a shy teacher meeting his students for the first time.
-" Oh, right. My mistake, Captain." replied Goidel. Afterward, he tried to apologize to the duo, but from his quick barrage of sentences, only the first one was understandable. "Sorryyoutwo. I'm still a, uhm. Right. Also, sorry fortryingtoattack you... big guy."
-"No…problem…" Ogda said while turning his head towards Liadan for help. The girl could only shrug back.
The two were a bit more at ease now, a bit confused, but the liquid being kept his guard up just in case. The third member quickly presented himself as Blitz from a distance and without even looking at them. He seemed more eager to return to the dune than to chit-chat, as he fidgeted around with gauntlets and metallic plates on his back. The Captain raised his neck to talk with him and after what seemed like a short, but intense exchange, he flew back from where he came.
-" Sorry for Blitz, he's more of a straight-laced kind of man when we are on a mission. So, what brings a little human girl and uhm…"
-" Hello. I'm Ogda."
-" Ogda. Are you two lost or…what? How did you even enter this layer? The Captain tried to maintain a friendly tone, but he was definitely interrogating the two. Unbeknownst to them, it looks like they somehow managed to trespass in this somewhere place as well.
Liadan was a bit weirded out about how direct yet pleasant the stranger tried to be. He seemed to care only about finding out the truth. "But he still has more information…How much should we say and how much can he hide?"
The feline warrior, after giving them some moments to reply, tried to guess their deal now. "Or are you another fresh batch of a Fetch pair that's too eager to go on an "adventure" ?", with heavy quotation marks at the end.
Both of them shared confused glances between them, still unsure of the trio. Liadan was prepared to invent a whole story out of the blue, but Ogda took a leap of faith with the Captain.
-" No, we're not. We don't even know what that is, to be honest. It's just that we woke up in this desert a while ago and…", he pauses to see if Liadan wanted to intervene, but without luck "and that's about it. We were just trying to find a way out of here."
-" Hmm, weird", replied the Captain, scratching his chin in thought. " Little girl, is that right?"
But Liadan kept quiet, racking her brain about everything. More weird creatures, more foreign terms, more that's out of the ordinary. " I'm uhm…I guess I agree", her stumbling words made the beaked warrior suspicious of them, and the girl caught on to it. He appeared absent from the conversation, but in truth paid a lot of attention to their reactions. So the girl took a deep breath to calm down. Counted down from 3 to 1 and tried to imitate the appearance of confidence. " Sorry for that, just a bit jittery from the…attack, I guess. So before we say anything, can you tell us who you are?"
The Captain's polite smile broke for a bit, jolted from her sudden change, but right away got back to his jolly self; " Right, looks like I'm catching some of Goidel's and Blitz's people skills. "
-" It's always easier this way", chipped in Goidel with a friendly snark.
-" The name's Krass and I'm the elected Captain for this mission. We are members of a little rescue and exploration team from a group from the eastern continental layer. Are you at least familiar with that?"
-" Krass…Captain…sir? Which do you prefer?", asked Ogda.
-" All of them at once if possible", replied Krass in jest.
-" I guess Captain", said Goidel earnestly.
-" INTERIM IS THE CORRECT ONE!" yelled Blitz from far away, to which Krass replied with a bone fragment thrown at the speed of a flying bullet. For them, it was a normal interaction, but seen from the outside it was way over the top and a bit disturbing. Which the Captain caught on from the looks on their faces.
-" Wait, don't be scared! He's got fancy radar and super hearing, he can easily dodge that. It's a normal thing between us."
Goidel, with half a smirk, tried to appease their worries, but he at the same time seemed kinda tired of doing it as well.
-" Ooook", said Liadan in an unwilling high-pitched tone. " So, I'm Liadan, and as you guessed I'm a human. I'm looking more like me, for now, and Ogda is helping me out. Do you know if there are other people, humans, in this…layer?" The girl finally caught on to the weirdness of the word used to describe the land. Is that how these people separated the borders between places?
-" Yeah, you could say that. We've got two humans in our group. A lady who helped us form the Platinum Union, and her son is actually a member...in training. A trainee; If you want, you could meet them...in exchange for some answers. So, do you mind if we go back to my first question? Can you explain now how you entered this quarantined layer?"
Liadan wanted to take Ogda aside and hatch a story, but they were already set up in the roles of travelers who just met in the desert." And, to be honest, I'm not sure why I want to beat around the bush this much", the girl admonished herself. " I should follow Ogda on this one and be a little more trusting…in measured bites though."
As the girl caught the needed confidence to explain her situation, a loud yell from the ridge of the dune replaced the gathered tension with another concern now. Blitz finally found their real target.