Noel
She cringes back, withdrawing her dagger and breathing through her teeth in disgust. *Why do I wield the dagger in my non-gauntlet hand?* She curses herself out as she shakes said hand, trying to get the eyeball soup off before having a bit of a "Oh, duh" Moment.

Tabby waves her fingers, casting a small, not-at-all-lethal dosage of the cantrip *Frostbite*, covering her goopy fur with snow & ice, taking said hand and pulling out a few things from her *Trinket* Bag of Holding — a tinderbox and 1 unlit torch, which she scrapes against the box — laid on the ground — and positions under her goopy left arm as the flame newly flickers from the edge. Waste of a torch, sure, but Tabby doesn't have a use for them otherwise with innate Darkvision.

The torch begins to melt the snow, turning it into water as she begins to shake said hand, trying to free it of all the crud that was newly nestled in her black coat. Upon melting, she snuffs the torch and reaches into her bag once more, pulling out a bar of soap and taking extreme care to lather her hand *Very* Well. If it wasn't blood and shit, Tabby would just lick it off like any other cat. For some *Strange* Reason, that isn't the case here. Wonder why.

With that out of the way, *Arcane Weapon* Ends its enchantment via intentional loss of concentration, and Tabby casts *Mending* On it, the blood not setting on the fine metal of the blade and instead just dropping off rather unceremoniously. 

The cat takes a deep breath as her defender steps back into the bag. *Well, that was a shitshow.* But, instead of leaving, the artificer inches closer to the dead Desecrated, observing them and getting up-close and personal in attempt to glean some information on their make-up. Surely, curiosity never hurt anybody, right?

Her dagger slips back into her *Weapon* Bag, as she reaches into the trinket for her notebook and an ink-covered quill, ready to mark her findings down before giving chase to Gaige once more.
Violette
As Josh and Shade are gliding, Josh notices between the leaves of the trees, one of the mercenaries!
"Shade, we're about to make an emergency landing!"
Homer
"Wait huh-" Shade was unable to finish as Josh turned his body into that of a rubber ball, with Shade quickly doing the same. They fell down to the grass beneath and they bounced for a while, before losing the momentum.
Steve
The Desecrated beast's body was incredibly strange. It seemed, certainly, to have an internal structure akin to a mammal. Its woody roots twisted and weaved into familiar structures, and the inner fibers of the stalk intertwined into the familiar forms of mock-muscle tissue, flesh, and even what appeared to be false-sinew. It was as if the creature was constructed to have a similar interior makeup to a typical animal, yet possessed a material makeup exclusively of wood... Or, perhaps, it actually *Was* Once a creature, yet was simply overrun with a wooden rot. Strange. Anything could be possible, considering how utterly impossible its physiology was, by normal standards.

The only portion of its body that was, indeed, flesh, was its eye, and behind that eye, a shriveled brain, which Tabby struck with her dagger. Odd. There were no arteries or method to bring circulation to the gray-matter, clearly formed of a soft-tissue much unlike the wooden skull that encompassed it. How it could continue existing in a wetted, thinking, and live state, despite such hindrances, was a true mystery, and perhaps a defiance of all earthly anatomy.
_ _

Tabby could still catch the faintest of whiffs of Gaige's scent, still drifting throughout the surrounding forest atmosphere. She could pursue it — further in the direction that she originally sprinted, and quite close, too. The scent grew stronger and stronger as she kept treading forwards, further into the forest...

...

Until,
*Nothing.*

The scent was thick, densely accumulated at one point in the forest, about twenty-second's dash forwards from the place of her combat with the Desecrated beast. Yes, definitely, due to the weight of the scent, he was here — and *Very* Recently. Yet, beyond that... There was nothing. The scent didn't travel in any particular direction, and instead simply lingered in that one spot. It was as if he *Vanished.*

...How odd.

At the very least, Tabby had one thing to follow — peeking from between the forest-roof above, there seemed to be a **Greattower, overgrown with blue roots,** Some distance in a direction that she, somehow, absolutely *Knew* Was north.
Violette
Josh began to run towards Tabby's direction, waving his arms ever so slightly instead of yelling as to not attract any unwanted attention.
Noel
Tabby, completely not paying attention to whatever bird-thing was gliding above her, casts *Ashardalon's Stride* At **4th level**, immediately zipping REAL fast outta there, evidently not really interesting in staying to chat. Her defender quickly retreats back into its *Bag of Holding* Home, which is *Lightning Lure*'d towards the cat through what appears to be a tractor beam from her gauntlet alongside her dagger & whatnot. Time to see what this whole tower ordeal is. Northwards the cat rushes at astonishing speed, once again leaving Shade & Josh in the dust as she runs *Even faster* Than when she was chasing Gaige, by about 10 ft extra per hour, meaning she is about the speed of the average car on the street, zipping and zooming along. For this cat is independent. 

Tabby mentally tries to compute where exactly the fuck Gaige went as she ducks, weaves and leaps over the roots of the trees, bushes, and what-have-you through her *Rocky Road* Ability, preventing such things from being Difficult Terrain, and thus *Not* Slowing her down. Of course, if people were to give chase, there's nothing a bit of back-and-forth can't solve, she reminds herself upon looking down at her gauntlet, which now held the items that she had *Lure*'d previously. 

She runs __**Away**__ from the tower, attempting to lure Josh and Shade off her trail as she moves at incredible speed — her unusually high *Stealth* Modifier coming in handy at a lovely *+8* As she ducks into a bush out of sight, casting *Invisibility* On herself and becoming completely unviewable — everything on her person vanishing with her as per the effects of the spell as an electrically-charged magic field prevents her from being perceived. No doubt, this would have been useful fighting the Desecrated, but should she have *Attacked* One, the device would have instantaneously failed and revealed her location. No, instead Tabby opts to play the long game. This cat doesn't need help. Or, want it, really.
Violette
"...Okay, again, we're by ourselves"

"You know I told them not to split up. This is a situation in which we could easily get killed off, and yet all of them are running in different directions like it's a Scooby Doo episode." Josh said, as he sighed.

"Shade, since nobody else wants to act normal around here, let's do what they're doing. Do you know where I'm going with this, Shade?"
Homer
"I have no damn clue.." Shade responded, confused.
Violette
"...I can't say it out loud, just give me a second.."
Noel
Tabby makes her way back to the tower, still in complete stealth mode with *Invisibility* On, looking up at it and trying to judge how best to tackle this new obstacle. If it's an easy to scale tower, she could climb it.. She's good at climbing.

*Hm. Best to see if there's a door at the bottom or an open window higher up so that I could get in without alerting much to my presence...*
Violette
Josh proceeded to remove the VARET and RASWLT, setting them down and turning his hand into a screwdriver, and begin prying open a panel on the VARET.
Homer
"J-Josh, what the HELL are you doing?!"
Violette
"Shh, lemme just... Aha!" Josh said, removing the panel successfully. Josh then proceeded to look inside the mechanisms of the VARET, searching for any form of chip used for location tracking.

"Shade, this thing is meant to get us in and out of the Vektet, right? Well, I'm thinking that it may also track our location, and if it does, I can't pull off something I want to do.."

"Huh... I don't see anything.." Josh said, simply deciding to turn off the device from the inside.

Josh then moved over to the Raswalt, the ear piece-shaped device with eye contacts connected to them. "This one is smaller, so I'll have to be extra careful in disabling it. Also, before you even ask Shade, I know that we need this thing to communicate with the denizens of the Vektet, that's why I'm going to alter the device a bit so that I can disable it at will. Even if neither of these contain any form of tracking devices, I want to be safe."

Josh, after working on the Raswalt, finally finished and re-attached the panels to both of them.

"Now that they're disabled, if there is tracking devices installed on these, they won't be active. Of course, they'll probably notice the tracker turned off so we now have a limited timeframe here."
Homer
Shade was absolutely baffled. "..Why? Why do you do shit like this, Josh? What's your goal here, dumbass?"
Violette
"My goal, is simple. Now that we have both of these temporarily disabled, WE can go off on our own and see if we can find anything that can help fix the TPD. Essentially, I want to know what caused the Vektet to appear here, and take it for myself."

"If this works, we can help a lot of people, Shade, even if we are breaking a lot of rules."
Homer
"So, you just want to upgrade the TPD so you can move everybody out of this timeline? You do realize that if we go to a nearby timeline it's just going to get pulled back here eventually, right?"
Violette
"That's the thing, if I'm right, we can find something to go *Farther*. Now come on, Let's move." Josh said, turning his legs into pistons yet again and propelling himself into the air, looking for a way out.
Steve
Following the gargantuan tower of the root-grown structure off in the distance — which seemed to lead to the very sky of the Floor, itself — Tabby would take notice that the forest was **Thinning in density,** Granting her greater sight of her surroundings. The thickness of the forest relieved, she could get a glance at what appeared to be a **Village, off in the distance.**

Were she to continue forwards, she would find herself within the  Where she went, from here, would be up to her...