There's a house over there! Kind of an ugly one, made of rocks and dirt. It smells like cooking and smoke and not-quite-human. There's a glowy rock on the ground that has traces of not-quite-human-smell on it. It would be a Really Bad Idea to touch it. Actually, there's a lot of glowy rocks in a big circle all around the house. They're not perfect, though, there's gaps.

Scary glowy rocks? Do not touch. It's fine, Luna can sneak past.

Hmm... dirt can be a house? It has a door, and a human-y smell, and a food smell. Probably a house?

The door is shut. Doors are hard! The window is open, though! Luna sneaks just a little bit closer, and nimbly leaps through the open window!

The house has a stone fireplace, a bed, an eating table and chair made of wood, some shelves with stuff on them including some food, and another room with lots of wood smells, where Wynn is at the moment.

"Aaah what the shit!"

She was leaning over a table, intently carving something into a rock.

Now she's alarmed, ears and tail bristling, and grabbing a stick and making a wall of blue appear in front of her. 

"Oi, who are you and how'd you get past the ward rocks?" She pauses a brief moment. "And why are you naked?"

Who is she? How did she get past the weird rocks? Why is she naked? Why does she feel the need to answer those questions?

Luna tilts her head to the side for a moment, juggling the questions, before the blonde woman confidently replies, "Luna is a very sneaky cat!"

She crawls a few steps closer, sniffing at the air, before adding, "You smell really good!"

"That-

The best kind of correct, huh? Valid. I don't think you're gonna attack me, but hell. Sneaking into peoples' houses without warning is very scary!"

Why is she naked. Why is this random stranger hot and naked??? Is this the first member of her isekai harem???

She drops the magic shield.

"Um anyway y-you smell nice too."

Luna continues her advance, crawling up to just in front of Wynn's feet.

"Luna sneaks into human houses a lot. Then humans give Luna food and scritches!"

She looks up at Wynn and takes a deep sniff, which incidentally puts her face at groin level on Wynn.

"You look and smell... sort of human? But better! Luna is confused."

She backs up to the wall in this process, feeling awkward and avoidant. Her fluffy tail sticks out along the wall, and she's actively avoiding looking at Luna. Also, getting more aroused by the second, doesn't this feel like a doujin setup?!?

"Yeah I dunno, I'm human but with fox stuff now. I'm human. It's magic, I dunno. D-D'you want clothes or uh-"

Luna shakes her head, but does not further pursue Wynn.

"No! Luna doesn't wear clothes."

The pretty bronze collar around her neck shouldn't be there either is totally fine and normal.

"W-Why not? I like clothes, they're less embarrassing than uh. Being naked in front of people. I guess you don't care about that?? Evidently?? Wait again you're in my house- Augh."

Luna tilts her head again, considering this confusing line of reasoning.

"Luna doesn't understand. This is a strange dream. Luna has more words! But Luna doesn't know 'embarrassing'. It is strange. Luna is confused."

"-This isn't a dream. I've gone to sleep and dreamed and woken up to the same thing, instead of back home, Luna."

Muttering, "Fricking frack, another isekai? And one in denial or... Something. Some more fucked-up mental changes than mine, maybe."

Luna holds up a hand, and looks at it carefully, before looking back to Wynn.

"Luna has hands! Luna has words! Luna only has hands and words when Luna is dreaming. So Luna is dreaming!"

She nods to herself, satisfied at having made a valid argument.

"-Right okay then. This isn't- 'Course not, okay. So, what happens when you go to sleep?"

Something about Wynn has changed now. There's a lot less anxiety and confusion and panic in her body language, she's speaking softly and gently.

Luna pauses, remembering.

"When Luna dreams, Luna has a different shape. There are strange places and strange thoughts. It is sometimes okay. Then Luna wakes up and is shaped right again. Less words. Less trouble."

Howwwwww to do this.

"I don't think you're dreaming. I think- I have no idea. Were you just - actually a cat, did someone Baleful Polymorph a cat, who would even-"

She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath.

"...Food. Then thinking." She points at the stone cook-pot in the other room.

Luna nods firmly.

"Luna is a cat! Different shape in dreams. It is okay. Dream will end. Luna will go home."

The suggestion of food perks her right up.

"Yay, food!"

She follows Wynn eagerly to where the food is.

Food is apparently...

Well. After a moment of thinking and a considerable amount of anxious muttering she offers a bowl of some sort of stew-ish mixture, and some strips of meat that were relatively well dried and smoked, and after hesitating a few raw bloody slightly fatty cuttings from an antelope that she mutters something about 'bait' before offering.

Luna sniffs at the stew and wrinkles her nose.

"Humans eat weird things."

She's pretty enthusiastic about both the dried and the bloody meat, though! As Wynn herself gets ready to eat, a thought seems to occur to Luna.

"Oh! Luna found some human food in the forest. Here!"

So saying, Luna reaches into her bag, and somehow pulls out a basket larger than the bag. She hands the basket to Wynn. It is indeed nearly full of human food; roasted nuts, blocks of cheese, loaves of bread, a jar of jam, and a jar of pickles.

She takes it and puts it up on a shelf. "Hey this is the exact same basket I had when I got here! You're an isekai too. But you don't believe me, whatever. Also, cool bag."

"Luna doesn't know 'isekai'. Luna found bag in a place where a human had slept. Sleeping place was broken, smell was faint. But left bag! Had other weird things!"

She starts digging through the bag, pulling out a huge heap of other items... a serviceable wood axe, a barbed fishing harpoon, a stack of detailed maps and star charts, a sextant, a formidable suit of armour encrusted with runes and diamonds, a very fancy combination watch-compass-barometer-divinator, a sack bulging with precious gems, a giant golden sword as tall as Luna is covered with intricate runework, a pair of pretty pearl earrings, a solid gold ankh inscribed with runes of purity and protection from curses/demons/undead, a similarly-runed golden chalice, a strange outfit composed of bones and feathers, a modern-looking bullet vibrator, a floating golden ring, a rugged-looking travelling outfit, a silver mirror with a complex set of runes along the edges, a simple container containing a sticky green substance, and a thin cloak which only seems to be visible from one direction.

"Luna doesn't know what weird things do. Can you explain to Luna?"

"Yeah hold on I can read magic stuff I just- Kinda processing and wondering what next and stuff."

"That is fine. Tell Luna when you know?"

Luna returns to eating, apparently quite content to clean Wynn completely out of her meat stores.

"These are just tools humans use to do things. Uh, fake claws. This is stuff humans like because it's shiny. Holy shit there's magic on this stuff. This looks like some kind of map? ...If you're gonna eat all my meat I want some of this stuff in exchange."

She's negotiating with a naked woman who is a cat. What is going on. What even is her life.

Luna considers this objection.

"Luna gave other food? Can give shinies if not enough?"

"Yeah no not all of it, some shinies maybe, meat is just harder to get. You're eating a bunch. This cup makes stuff less poisonous, I have one like it. This looks like something you can hide under. The rest I have to look at for longer I think."

Luna nods seriously.

"Hunting is effort! Luna can help with hunting?"

"Maybe. I can kill animals I just don't like going and finding them. Making magic stuff is more fun. Though you showed me I need to step up the defenses anyway..."

"Luna can find, too! Hunting is a fun game!"

She pauses, then adds.

"Is easier to get humans to give Luna food."

She snorts and laughs.

"Always easier to beg, yeah. Too bad. I'm not rich enough here to just feed you. Especially because you're big now! Huh, I wonder if I can make something to find prey... Seek mammal, above a certain size, exclude me..."

Luna seems bored with this conversational direction, and wanders off to start poking through Wynn's things.

Sure. Just ignore the fact that there's a hot naked woman crawling around in your house. Nothing Is Going To Happen.

She can pick up the ankh and start - there's good stuff in here, she should write this down as she figures out what it does- Eating stew in the meanwhile.

-Thaaaat is a vibrator but whatever ignore it. How does this ankh work? "My magic instinct or whatever is only helping so much, this is freakin' intricate... Holy stuff, whatever it does, but how...?"

She has a bunch of bags that don't open to light pressure and a lot of things made of wood on shelves, and even more in the workshop room. Some of them smell like blood and some smell like food and some smell like wood and one of them that's kept out of the way smells like Wynn and sex.

That's a neat smell! Luna will investigate that bag!

Wynn is still poring over the ankh and doesn't notice.

The bag contains two smooth, polished wooden dildos in different shapes and a couple small stoppered containers.

Yes, the strange piece of wood has a very nice smell! Does it have a nice flavour?

It tastes... Like wood. Maybe a small hint of something good? But mostly wood.

Hmm. Luna puts it back and investigates the containers.

One of them had a sticky sweet brown syrup in it. The other has crushed mushroom caps. The last has something creamy white and good-smelling.

That creamy white stuff has an even better smell! How does it taste?

It tastes warm and pleasant, like rich milk mixed with fatty meat and protein!

Luna savours a mouthful of the delicious cream, before letting out a low, rumbling, "Mmmmmmmmmmmm!"

"Wh- Hey! Don't eat that!"

Luna immediately stops, going rigid.

Aaahh? 

"Uh, Luna. That stuff is- It makes you want to have sex. Are you- Okay?"

What? Why'd she stop? What's going on why can't she? This is fine.

Luna's hand twitches towards her neck. Luna turns and smiles broadly at Wynn.

"Yes. Luna is okay."

AAAAAAA!

"-Nah something's wrong."

She stands up and walks over to Luna, squats down. "I- Kay. Here, I'm takin' a look at that collar. Maybe it's what's screwing with your head."

Get it off get it off!

"Nothing is wrong. Luna is fine."

Luna holds mostly still for Wynn's examination, though her hand is shaking a little.

She peers closely at the collar, opening up her rune related senses.

She hisses as if in pain, and touches her shoulder to get a closer look.

"Fuuuuuck. This thing is magic. Nasty magic. Bits of control, and soul... Oh hell. Cursed or something."

Luna makes a short sad noise, but does not otherwise react to Wynn's probing.

"This thing is bullshit. Not cool. I don't really know about curse breaking but I can try, I got a fuckoff strong holy rod?"

Yes! Hurry, get it off get it off get it off! No, it's fine.

"You don't need to do that."

Wynn makes a frustrated sound and goes to retrieve her Judgement Rod, a tall shiny staff with a large gemstone set in the top. She feels the holy energy thrum through her.

She could just not and tell Luna to lick her-

"No. Just fucking no, no way, that shit is evil I can feel it." She growls to herself and mutters. "Bonk, go to hornyjail. Fuck you brain I am not a fucking SLAVER."

Deep breath. She looks at Luna again and composes a likely spell in her head, frowning.

Luna waits, screaming internally smiling pleasantly.

She wants the nasty curse on this thing, shackling the mind, to Go Away. Keeping this goal firmly in mind and targeting the flows of magic she can sense in the inscriptions, she intones, "Thelchirr gampeslo."

And starts channeling mana aspected to block out foreign magic and wither the 'attack' away, inserting it into the lines of the maliciously enchanted collar at a steady rate.

Luna sits quietly, the same false smile frozen on her face as Wynn channels her spell. If anything, she's even starting to smell a little aroused, as the effects of her unwise indulgence begin to make themselves known.

Get it off get it off get it off!

Magic items are naturally somewhat resistant to external forces, whether physical or magical.

It feels strange?

Even without going to any particular trouble to implement defences or security precautions, the nature of the way the magic is bound to runes makes runic items stable and durable... and difficult to damage with simple brute force.

Ow!

It's not impossible to destroy a magic item in this way, but it's also not easy.

It hurts! Get it off!

Nor is it without side effects.

OWWW! It hurts! It hurts!

Even a common Slave Collar would have some protections against tampering or destruction.

No wait, stop! It hurts too much...

The collar around Luna's neck is not a common example of its kind; it was designed to restrain and suppress an exceptional individual, and has extensive defences against exactly this sort of tampering.

It hurts it hurts it hurts!

Of course, there's only so much condition-response that can be factored into a simple runic item.

Stop! Don't hurt Luna!

This one's pretty straightforward, though.

It hurts it hurts it hurts make it stop...

If a bunch of magic is being put into the collar in a crude brute-force dispel attempt, that's probably because a desperate and magically-gifted slave is trying to break free.

Nonononono stop please stop!

Therefore: punish the slave.

AAAAAAAAAA!

Escalate punishment until interference ceases.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Luna remains smiling and motionless, but a single tear drips down her cheek as she sits. The scent of arousal competes with the growing scent of fear.

She pushes steadily on the curse, trying to overwhelm it, watching what it does.

She doesn't notice the changing smell- She's not actually used to using scent as a main sensory modality, and hers is not that sensitive. She sees the tear, though, and winces and hisses out a breath as she drops the spell.

"-Shit, oh hell, are you okay? I don't know, I- Dammit! I'm such a useless reckless prick, yeah, just shove magic at it, that'll work. Fuck, it wasn't working, like at all. I hope I didn't hurt you too much. Stupid, stupid, this isn't a video game..."

She's pacing, hackles of her tail raised in an alarm and fear display.

Luna doesn't respond, or move, at all, but another tear drips down her face. There's no room for anything inside but pain right now.

To Wynn's magical senses, something was definitely able to handle, and even process some of the magic she was sending into the collar, and now it's doing something different from what it was doing before. It'd be easier to figure out what if the runes were directly visible, instead of being concealed.

Yeah no she is not fucking with that right now, she's half-panicking. She's scared to try anything else, muttering about anesthetic spells? Or knocking Luna to sleep? But would that make it worse?? If it's not touching the collar maybe it'd be fine?????

...She does, after a good twenty seconds of Luna being locked up, try something - away from the collar, holy magic, healing magic, shaped as a painkiller. She's used it on herself before. She feels out the flow of energy, ready to kill it if it seems to be reacting with the collar at all.

There's no reaction from Luna, but Wynn can feel her magic running into a different flow of magic from the collar. It feels like it's doing exactly the opposite of what she's trying to do.

She kills it in the first half-second. "Fuck this fucking thing god fucking dammit who the fuck does this!"

She clearly can't do anything here-

-Except feed Luna a bit of this minty-smelling herb her Convenient Instincts had her gather as a natural painkiller, much less effective than actual magic but? Maybe? It can't make anything worse? (It totally could, but: Panic.)

Luna isn't moving anything right now, including her mouth and throat. She's crying quite a bit, though.

There is nothing Wynn can do about that right now!!!! So she'll just keep feeling terrible for being so stupid and reckless!!!! "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

In that case, it'll just keep happening for at least a few more minutes.

Wynn... Puts Luna onto her bed, paces and panics, and then leaves the house.

She darts back in a bit later, holding four dripping (recently thawed by fire magic from her little cellar freezer thing) rabbits.

When she returns, she finds Luna asleep, with the collar no longer tormenting her.

She has to make this right.

She puts down the rabbits by her bed, quietly gathers up much of her stuff - the magic gear, at least, and particularly the air magic totem-thing she made that provides a constant stream of fresh air, and runs out into the hills, away from the edge of the rainforest. 

Those slavers are still poking around, she thinks. They might know how collars work.

Wynn still remembers where she first encountered the slavers, and she's seen signs of their presence in the area since then. They aren't necessarily still after her in more than the opportunistic sense; she's not aware of having been tracked back to her home, and there haven't been any signs of an intelligent attempt to dismantle her magical defences. It's been a while since she first encountered them, though, and she's still seeing signs of their presence when she ventures too far from the treeline. Perhaps they also have a camp nearby? If so, the trick will be finding it on favorable terms, rather than being caught by the slavers' patrols.

Yeah, she went pretty far away from them and pretty fast. She still gets tired, but between magic and her DEX-monster-ness she covered a lot of ground in three, four days of effortful travel. 

Utility magic runes can point her to the closest whatever-she-can-sufficiently-define. "Human that's not her or Luna" in this case. She has some instructions about how to do scrying, too, but you need to have something specific in mind and know where it is first, for that. She uses a carved wooden compass to find the nearest person... Though actually, even if she's in the middle of nowhere that might be another traveller or something, rather than those damn slavers.

Back west a ways first, then, staying in valleys and tall grasses, and once she's gotten most of the way back to where she dropped in using the compass to find and shadow anyone in the area.

Her first success with the spell leads her to a grove of huge pink flowers, which fill the air with a sweet and aphrodisiac haze. Their petals have an almost fleshy aspect to them, making the closed blossoms look almost like mouths (easily big enough to 'swallow' a person), and the thick purple vines sprouting form each pod have a definite tentacular aspect, especially in the way they occasionally twitch. These factors might encourage Wynn to keep her distance... except for the sight of the target of her spell, a young woman near the centre of the grove, whose nude form is engulfed in one of the flowers to her waist, while several tentacular vines entwine themselves around her body and gently molest her breasts. She doesn't seem to have noticed Wynn yet.

She notices herself getting hornier at that strange, pleasant smell. It's like the medley of a Yankee Candle store but better, making her really want to walk up and get a good, deep whiff of it. And it's also, she's pretty sure, an aphrodisiac. She doesn't actually recognize this kind of plant, unlike the useful herbs and trees she knows, which is... Concerning. Also, they're raping someone. So, yeah, clearly a threat.

Luckily after the slavers attacked her with airborne poison, she spent all that time making a personal air supply! It's a bulky gas-mask like thing that's uncomfortable and distracting to wear since it outputs more air than is necessary for her to breathe, constantly. "But it's way better to wear a mask without being attacked by gas than to breathe gas without a mask." She puts it on.

She... Watches for a little while, trying to map out the grove and look for anything else that might be a threat than sex pollen. Maybe her intuition would warn her, maybe not. Be Prepared!

Intuitively, this place doesn't really feel very dangerous; nothing here seems to have a harmful intent. In fact, so long as Wynn wears her mask and keeps her distance, nothing here is even the least bit threatening. Unfortunately, given the rubbing action Wynn can see from the vines, they're probably pretty mobile, and she'd have to pass within grabbing range of multiple flowers to get within touch range of her target.

On closer examination, the girl enjoying the tentacles' affections seems to be embedded in the largest and healthiest-looking flower; the rest are all somewhat smaller and less shiny. For that matter, every flower here is within a stone's throw of the grove's center.

They're probably not really much of a threat to her, she's not feeling even the subtle spikes of concern that the wolf packs give her now that her (annoying, intrusive) mask is on. And she's so much quicker in this new body that it's not even funny. They couldn't touch a single hair on her head - or tail - if she doesn't want 'em to.

She still plans her route carefully to minimize contact. She dashes into the field to a clear spot away from the pods, and looks closer at the poor trapped woman, thinking about how to free her. Construct magic, probably, but hmm...

The flowers make a cursory attempt to grab Wynn, but she's too quick for their feeble attempts to succeed. She could probably even get away with milking some "perfume" from the flowers, if she wanted to push her luck a little.

On closer examination, there's definitely some tentacles inside the central flower's "victim". Like, really far inside; so far inside that Wynn can sort of make out the shape of her intestines from the way her guts are bulging around the intruders. On Earth, that alone would be the sort of penetration that would require a team of doctors and hours of surgery to safely handle, even ignoring the fact that the offending limbs are still attached to a living plant that's filling her with unknown fluids. Said victim, for her part, responds to Wynn's arrival with a giggle and a cheeky wave.

"Christ, it's really got you good, doesn't it? And without a mask-" She shivers. It must be overwhelming. Kind of hot to think about, if also extremely fucking scary. "Are you... Stuck, or...?"

Her expression is dreamy and blissful as she replies, "Oh yeah, I'm real stuck!" She giggles some more, than continues, "It's got tendrils alllll the way up my ass, and my womb's all stretched out and full of seeds. It's sooooooo good! You should try it!"

"Oh, hell." She feels kind of sick, the more she thinks about it. "And how long will I end up stuck there? Do you want out?"

She seems to have trouble thinking of an answer to that. "Dunno? I've been here for... a long time? Back when there was, like, only one flower? And now, look at all my pretty babies! They alllllllll came out of me!" She seems quite pleased by this, "I wanna stay forever and keep making more pretty flower babies!"

"Gag me with a spoon." She wants to throw up. She wants to burn these fucking things. But - "Fuck. Interfering already burned me once. What if this is a fuckup waiting to happen too..."

.......

"Hey," she calls out, "I'm Wynn. You got any family? Would they be worried about you?"

"Hi, Wynn!" She takes a deep breath, and loses it in a fit of giggling. "Ummmm... like other people?" giggles, "Yeah, I used to live with other people once! It's like, sooooo hard to remember, I was so old then! Now, the only other people are those nice men who come to play with my babies!" She pouts, "They never want to stay, though..."

Her ears perk up, wait what. 'Nice men'. This sex pollen could be ... It could probably sell well, if it keeps, it's really damn strong stuff.

She forms a Suspicion. One that makes her angry.

"...Hey, did the nice men put you here?"

She nods eagerly, "Yeah! I was, like, too old and sick to help them, so they brought me to my flower! I'm alllllll better now!"

Huh.

Huh.

...Yeah, well. Last resort, and only if she makes arrangements to be rescued. And only in, like, fifty years. Still that changes things. That changes kind of a lot of things.

"Wow, that's great! If you're all better now, maybe you could leave. Go say hi to the people you used to know. D'you want to go say hi? Look for them?"

Either 'them', really.

"I can take you there and back fast. I'm pretty magic."

She seems to think about this for a while. "It gets a little lonely here sometimes," she admits, "But my flower's really nice! I guess it'd be better with more people around?"

"Being lonely's bad for you! I think we should look for other people. You can always come back if you want to later."

She seems to think about it a bit, then giggles. "I can't go anywhere, silly! I'm, like, realllllly stuck! And it'd hurt my flower if I went away! Um... if you have to go, maybe bring me a friend when you come back?"

She bites her thumb, thinking and muttering.

""Rescuing"" someone from a shitty situation while hurting their abuser. That's the frame of reference that most - fits this. It's not helping that she has no idea if the flowers are people. They don't seem like it, but they're kind of ... Aliens? They could think in an entirely separate modality to her and have rich inner lives while being mindless tentacle-waving things on the outside.

It sounds stupid but she can't rule it out.

You don't know all the details of another's situation. Your well-meaning meddling can just make everything worse. Make a social or mental situation that was stable-ish blow up catastrophically.

Because she just burned an innocent person by fucking with things she doesn't understand and lashing out at an injustice is, perhaps, making her a bit too hesitant here.

Imagine you hadn't met Luna. Just this person. What would that Wynn do?

Burn the fucking thing and then heal the poor soul repeatedly. Obviously.

'It's for your own good'. She's heard dozens of stories of that being the by-line just before everything fucks up. CPS sticking their nose in and jerking kids around. Extroverts dragging introverts to parties, or busybodies taking away the release of drugs that stabilize a life. She feels so young and uncertain; Her story isn't that hard. She just kind of ... Experienced being around that sort of ambient desperation, while being kind of insulated from it.

How long has she been here? Years, decades. She's lonely. She's being raped.

-Don't let your own prejudices take over entirely. She seems to be enjoying it. But then, sex pollen. She can make an uninhibited decision to come back, once she's - clean. She'll toss some healz at the flower itself, too.

Can't do nothing. Doing something might make it all worse.

"You're not gonna like what's about to happen..." She says slowly, feeling like a hypocrite, "But it is for the best."

She forms a sword out of construct magic, adjusts her mask, psyches herself up just long enough for the flower victim to react...

She sees the blade, and her eyes widen in horror. "No! Don't hurt my flower!"

The surrounding flowers seem to sense her agitation, and begin to stir in earnest, readying themselves for some kind of action. It's not exactly an unintelligent response.

The danger level rises a few notches, and Wynn becomes aware of the possibility that a lashing vine might knock off her mask.

It is time to be fast. She can ignore the awkwardness in a crisis situation, with a good reason. Just focus on what's gotta happen and forget the rest.

She darts on top of the flower holding the victim, squats and grabs her around the waist, and lifts to see if the flower will let go. No, like she thought, she's really stuck in there.

The main flower is going for the grapple, starting to wind its vines around Wynn's limbs. If this turns into a contest of strength, Wynn is going to lose badly, but it probably can't restrain Wynn fast enough to stop her from cutting off the offending vines.

The surrounding flowers are starting to contribute as they can, flailing at Wynn with long-range whipping attacks; these hurt, and there will definitely be bruises later, but she can deal with the pain for now.

The victim, for her part, is screaming and crying and slapping at Wynn with limbs weak from disuse. It's a distraction more than anything else, but she's got a pretty good angle on Wynn's mask, and manages to knock it slightly loose, letting in a whiff of... pretty potent stuff, actually. How bad would it be if she loses, again?

The mask flies away, propelled by its own air and not secured especially well.

It smells so good. She blushes, flushes. Heat builds inside her, and she's hyper aware of the soft flesh of her breasts and nipples on her traveling clothes. Of how the undershorts rub slightly against her skin.

This is something from a hentai too, isn't it? She'd be blissed out. Like cocaine.

Also, ow. Also, YEEP! She was distracted and almost got grabbed! She takes another deep breath (hot burning NEED to be filled up, better than porn, better than a Hitachi wand-) twitches, holds it.

Peaceful extraction isn't working. She- Will just go ahead and cut the victim free, slicing up the vines holding her with the constructed sword, cutting at the flower-flesh with isekai-powerup-level strokes. And then use another construct, set to soft and squishy, to pull her out of there!

The vines are thick and fibrous; not easy to sever with a single blow, unless Wynn really puts all her force into it. It's not easy to see where the victim ends and the flower begins, and Wynn's sword-construct comes away bloody from misjudging that boundary.

A lashing vine whip from behind catches Wynn in the ear, and her head rings from the force of the blow. The main flower is changing tactics in response to the damage it's taking; the vine looped around Wynn's right leg is tightening quickly, and is about to snap her leg like a twig... in a couple seconds, once it's got the leverage.

The victim is screaming like Wynn's here to murder her and her family, and is trying to scratch out an eye. But Wynn's nearly gotten her free. Just another couple of cuts...

"Thel!"

It's not efficient but she can channel healing into herself and cut with the construct blade and kick her way out of a vine's grip and ignore the fucking aphrodisiac horniness all at once, it's so easy, not that it's in slow motion but that she can just Go Faster-

The main flower has taken quite a bit of damage, now. Its manipulatory tentacles are all damaged or severed, and the breeding tendril is probably severed, and the feeding tendril is almost severed, but it's still fighting on like it expects to die here. The severed end of a tentacle smacks Wynn in the tit, and a gush of sticky purple sap splurts all over her body and clothing. Petal-lips hold tight against the poor woman's body, fighting Wynn for every inch with firm pressure. More distant vine-tentacles continue to beat on Wynn, each lashing strike leaving another painful bruise.

The victim is bleeding from multiple wounds, but she's managed to work a finger into Wynn's eye socket, and wow is that ever distracting. But she's coming loose of the flower, it should just take a good hard jerk to get away.

Her screaming full body twitch jerks her aside, still holding on.

"I'LL NUKE IT FROM ORBIT NEXT TIME FUCKS SAKE FUCKING FUCK THAT FUCKING HURTS."

She takes another gasping breath and nnng. Check, right. Girl? Check. Vines? Ow. Still there. She steps backwards to avoid a swipe.

"Thelchirr!"

Healing magic for all three involved parties as she dodges tentacles some more. She's holding the Judgement Rod in her off hand, the construct sword now dissipating, and it massively overpowers holy magic.

And then she retreats, slowed down a lot by the weight.

Wynn's rescuee is not at all happy to have been rescued, and is still crying and screaming and doing her very best to injure Wynn... though much less successfully, now that Wynn has the attention to spare.

She takes them outside of view of the flowers and sets her down, after checking whether the central one is still active. It seems... Alive, at least.

And then. Lots and lots of healing magic. She tries permutations until she finds one that seems more aspected to poison, then casts that repeatedly. On both of them. She's relieved the unnatural arousal is gone, but now she has a twinging headache from using so much mana, and as she learned magic use can attract other critters, so it's not over yet. She's- Watchful, anxious, and quiet.

Her unwilling rescuee... She leaves alone unless she tries to go back.

The rescuee seems to be considering an immediate return! But instead, she takes in a deep, shaky breath and asks, "Why?"

Now that Wynn thinks to check her surroundings, she notices something like a slimy pink wolf watching her from atop a nearby hill. It's keeping its distance, though; she can sense how wary it is of her magic. She can also tell that it's hungry, and hoping that the fight means a chance for an easy meal.

Yeah, well, she has magic still and knows you're there. She doesn't provoke a fight more than briefly checking if there's more than one.

"You couldn't even think about it. Whether you actually wanted to be there. It wasn't letting you actually choose, since you were high the whole time. I didn't kill it, you can go back - once you actually think about it. Is that sex pollen shit gone now, or...?" Wynn gestures vaguely at her midsection. "Oh, I've got some spare clothes if you want."

There doesn't seem to be more than one of the pink wolf things. It certainly isn't about to pick a fight with a powerful mage that's aware of its presence! But it could just... feed, and not fight about it, if she's in the mood?

The rescuee reaches down awkwardly to scratch at her crotch, where the visible feet of severed tendrils are clearly just the tip of the iceberg of what's inside of her. Even if her magic purged the woman's bloodstream, there's no way that much plant matter isn't going to have some kind of ongoing effect until it gets removed. The woman does seem a bit more lucid now, though... she looks back towards the grove for a few moments, before turning back to Wynn with a determined expression. "Heal my flower, too. Or I'll fight you every step of the way."

She ignores the thing. It must be her imagination and the sex pollen.

"-Yeah fair. I hit it with some heal on the way out. I'll go back and channel more once I catch my breath. I just-" She closes her eyes and restrains a sigh. "I would've wanted to be rescued."

If it's just her imagination, then a part of Wynn's brain is inexplicably fantasizing about being licked out by a pink slimy wolf. Or maybe watching her rescuee get licked out while she gently pulls the flowery tendrils free? They're both still kinda horny, there's a good meal there for sure, and said wolf is very cautiously advancing in the hopes that it'll get a taste.

"I didn't ask to be rescued," observes the woman, "But since you insist on kidnapping me anyways, I guess that's the best I'm going to get."

"Yeah, fair."

Okay, now it's making her nervous. She lobs a casual firebolt in that general direction, minimal power and using the full chant to lower the mental load.

The wolf retreats the moment Wynn starts chanting, fleeing back over the crest of the hill. It's so hungry! But fine, it'll find a meal somewhere else.

"Be right back."

She looks around the field of flowers again. Where'd her mask get to? Worst case, she can hold her breath for long enough to mend the central Fucking Rape Plant.

Her mask fell somewhere near the middle of the grove, where it got smashed into the ground by tentacles a couple times for good measure. The flowers aren't particularly calm about Wynn's return, so a bit of dodging is called for.

Well that's like half a day down the drain.

Well, dodging and channeling holy magic into some pretty thorough healing and dashing away to catch her breath and repeat is something she can do.

She goes back to her kidnapee when the central flower seems to stop getting more restored.

The flowers get notably less agitated when she starts healing the central flower; by the time Wynn's done, they're barely grabby.

For her part, the kidnapping victim is attempting to work a considerable length of severed vine out of her gaping ass, and is not at all having an easy time of it.

...It's incredibly awkward but she will, er, help with that. With plenty of healing on offer.

This takes quite a lot of effort; there was more than six feet of tentacle-vine up in her! Every bit of it is slick with aphrodisiac slime... which does help avoid damage as it comes out, but also means it's hard to get a proper grip on, as well as offering yet another opportunity to expose Wynn to exciting sex poisons! Though in this case, it's more of a mild second-hand high, since the substance in question was designed to be absorbed internally.

It's not going away, ugh. At least water magic is also a thing. They can both get cleaned up over time. Really, really thoroughly.

It definitely takes quite a bit of cleaning! But eventually, with the feeder tendril is no longer stuffing her intestines, and the breeder tendril no longer filling her pussy, the kidnapping victim is left with nothing more intrusive than a womb full of seeds, and so merely looks heavily pregnant instead of impossibly bloated and stretched. It's not time for the seeds to come out yet, and they probably can't be forcibly removed without surgery... but now she can sort of hobble along under her own power. It's probably still faster to carry her, though.

"If you have a name of someone you knew," she says slowly, "I can scry for your home. Or, like I said, you can go back. I'm looking for someone and I think it might be the ones who came by sometimes. But I will deal with that myself."

She looks skeptical, "Really? After all that, you're just going to let me walk right back? Why the hell did you bother in the first place, then..."

She seems to be seriously considering walking right back down the hill, but hesitates. "You want to see the 'ones who came by sometimes', do you? Why? Going to mess them up, too?"

She shrugs. "You didn't get to make an uninhibited choice, it sounded like. You can choose now, and if you'd go back - you'd go back later just the same, probably. And- If they're the same group who tried to paralyze and enslave me 'bout two, three weeks ago? Probably, yeah. I need to know how to take a slave collar off someone. Er, safely."

She pauses a bit, "They were traders, the way I remember them; they didn't take or sell slaves that I knew of. Might've changed since, I suppose." She rubs her belly before continuing, "I'm... not really excited by the thought of hobbling back to the old village, but if nothing else, I should find somewhere else to plant these. I still want the best for my babies, and it's better for them to be in a place where there's room to grow."

"Seems like there's lots of somewhere else. I don't know how much you can take care of yourself. I've got food, you can have some. And a bunch of magic shit - long story. And a spare outfit, but uh."

She grimaces, "Yeah, if it was a choice between trying to walk back to my old home unescorted, and heading back to my flower, I'm way better off with my flower. If I walk back alone, something less nice definitely gets me part way. But yeah, I'll take a meal."

At the offer of clothing, she sporfles, gesturing between Wynn's shorter, foxy form, and her own bulging belly, "Do you have anything that'd fit?"

"A pair of pants that'd maybe fit okay? And there's a big cloak I could part with."

She hid her bag not too far from here. There's jerky, fresher-cooked meat, jam and preserves, crackers, and even a miniature magic icebox that has some kind of soup.

She'll follow along, assuming Wynn's not in any hurry. It turns out that she finds the pants incredibly uncomfortable to wear; even after all the healing, she's just way too sensitive down there to have anything touching her skin. She'll take the cloak, though.

As for food... she hasn't used her mouth for eating in a long time, so the soup will probably go down better.

She makes a campfire and re-warms the soup. It's a mixture of whatever edible vegetables she's been able to find plus lots of meat, with a nice stock mostly derived from the fat of the weird deer she hunts. Surprisingly good cooking, if with a slim selection of ingredients.

She's quiet and anxious and a bit twitchy.

Yeah, that's a reasonable demeanor out here. It's a dangerous place, and there are plenty of predators out there... not all of which are unintelligent.

Wynn's semi-involuntary guest eats slowly and lightly, as she gets used to the idea once again.

Wynn... Honestly gets kind of bored? She's not going to practice runes here, in the open, when she still doesn't know just how much of a target that makes her. The whole practice uses a couple of extra magic-nodes, which are probably mandatory and might make her a target.

She eats pensively, wondering if she's even doing the right thing. And then darts off to cut a smallish limb off the nearest tree she can see and start working on it - another spear, why not - just to occupy her nervous energy while her 'guest' recuperates a bit.

The food is finished before the spear is, and the silence stretches as the guest gets ready for a long walk.

She doesn't have much more than a vague idea of what the right direction is, but it's not like the day is getting any younger.

Wynn occupies herself trying to find a variation on the 'vin' magic-node that will find the place, but - doesn't know enough theory, or something.

She asks her rescuee (kidnapee): Would it be okay if she carries them both on a sled made of magic instead? It makes them more visible and she's going to get tired, but it'd be a lot less boring.

She shrugs, "You're the mage. If you think the attention is safer than the delay, I'll go with it. It'll save me a long walk, at least."

"-Yeah, it's not that high maintenance."

The sled forms. It takes focus, concentration, to keep up. At least it's engrossing so she can stop thinking about all the ways in which she's fucked up.

Wynn's guest joins her on the sled, and they set off!

The hills and dips make for an uneven ride, but probably not as rough as a carry would be. Wolves (probably the furry kind) are heard at one point, but the pack isn't in the pair's line of travel... and Wynn's careful to avoid any other groups of sketchy plants. As they slide across the land, signs of civilization start to become more apparent; there are old huts, and trails that don't look entirely abandoned. Maintaining the construct is a fair drain on her magic, but it does seem likely that they'll be able to make the village before nightfall at this rate. So long as she doesn't need to fight a battle when they get there, things should be fine.

...She'd rather stop and camp, just in case, actually.

She raises a small covered shelter with Earth magic and scatters a few rocks in a circle around the camp that she says should wake them up in case of attack.

She only has one "bedroll" though; She'll sleep in the dirt, she can make it a bit softer at least.

Her guest takes the hospitality without comment.

The night passes without much event. Wynn is woken up by her wards at the approach of a creature, but it flees the moment it realizes she's awake, leaving nothing but a disconcerting sense of being watched.

She sleeps badly. Whatever. At least her mana's coming back. It's hard to suppress the fear, and after failing to fall back asleep she grumbles and finishes the spear she started over yesterday's dinner, keeping watch and starting on a breakfast of softened hardtack with jam and fresh-picked berries when twilight finally arrives.

Her guest doesn't seem in much better of a mood... but there ought to be a settlement of some kind before too long, and then they'll be finished with this adventure. Still, she tries to make an effort to not be grouchy.

"I suppose if we're going to be travelling together, I should at least know your name. I'm Daisy Sagebalm. You?"

"Wynn. And- No other name. I renounce it."

She interrogates Daisy about landmarks, peering off into the distance to home in on the place.

"If you don't like 'em, I'll bring you back again. Back to the flowers. I always meant to, but... Ah fuck, I'll stop trying to justify myself. I doubt you want to hear it."

"I still don't remember the details all that well... but there's this big old road that runs between the Untainted and the Green. Can't miss it if we keep going this way, and if we head west along it, we'll definitely reach somewhere civilized. My village was one of a few that squat at the roadside and work the lands; so if we go too far, it's back the way we came instead."

She listens to Wynn's explanation with just a touch of bitterness. "It's not like I came to my flower against my will, you know? I was old and sick, and wanted something gentle to take care of me. It was... relaxing, not needing to think ahead, or work hard, or be responsible for other people."

"-I kind of thought you did. It's honestly wonderful that that's an option. It makes sense, super valid. I'll go for something like that once I'm old, maybe. Just. I'd also arrange to be rescued eventually. Personally. Wonder how hard it'd be to figure out how the getting younger works, make it in a vat..."

Daisy scoffs, "If youth could be made in a vat, I'd've brewed it up myself. There are charms that'll slow your aging, but they're expensive... or you can pay a fleshweaver to remake you so that you won't grow old, and that can go badly wrong. Everyone else gets to choose between the afterlife the priests talk about, or paradise here."

"People invent stuff sometimes. -Not fast enough, cold comfort to those here and now." She continues immediately. "I will take you back. Just say the word. I will."

She looks conflicted. "Not... not right away, I don't think? First, I'll want to plant my seeds somewhere they'll be safe and not cause mischief. After that...I guess it depends on how happy people are to have me back?"

"Yeah." Sigh. "Do you think it'll be... Soon? I'm... I want to get back to Luna with something to free her as soon as I can, that's all."

"Umm..."

Daisy pats her belly, "Well, there's only so much room inside me, so... probably before too long?"

"Right. I'll - check back in a week or two, then, whatever happens. Or a month or two. I don't know how long it takes. For now, time to go find that road?"

She nods, and boards the sled when Wynn recreates it.

As expected, the road wasn't that much further. At some point in the past, someone felt the need to lay down tons of cobblestone to make a nice mostly-level mostly-straight path through the wilderness, and it's still in good shape to this day.

"Oh, infrastructure! First step to civilization. Wonder who paid for it."

She sleds along in the correct direction, feeling comfortable to go faster on the smooth surface, passing around or through villages if they're not the right one. And nothing ought to mess with an obvious spellcaster. Probably. Hopefully.

The road is in pretty good shape, and there's a fortunate absence of threatening vegetation nearby, allowing for relatively safe passage. For a good few hours, no threat gets closer than a wolf lurking in a stand of trees about 70 feet off the road, and it doesn't seem interested in chasing down such an overtly magical contraption.

After a couple of hours, the road leads to a bridge. The bridge is in good repair, and includes a guard house, from which a flag bearing a dragon crest flaps in the light breeze. Some kind of siege weapon is also fixed to the roof of the guard house, though it's not in quite as good repair as the rest of it. A trio of guards lounge idly by the door, each wearing sturdy leathers, covered by a tabard bearing the same crest as the flag. They straighten up as you approach.

She lets the magic construct-sled slide to a gentle stop a good hundred feet away. She feels a bit twitchy, but is she just imagining things? Convert-->Defense is a quick enough path if she has to react suddenly, though. She went through it by reflex in a couple seconds last time it was necessary.

She glances, concerned, at her passenger as she stands and walks forward slowly.

"Hello?" She shouts.

The lead guard is smiling, but his fellows are holding crossbows... not pointed in any particular direction, but definitely available. He nods as you draw closer.

"Hello yourself, traveller. Looking to cross?"

"...Suppose so. I admit, the bridge is new to me. We've been crossing rivers with magic and I haven't been this way in some time. Good to see signs of order, though." Bullshit, it makes her nervous. Given the other organized group of armed men she's encountered. But easy to say.

He frowns slightly at that, and the guards with crossbows seem a little more nervous, "Ah, homesteaders? It's not safe, living out in the wilderness like that. Those that do come back tend to be... affected by the experience. I hope you don't mean any trouble?"

"I'm escorting Daisy, here," Mention names, it humanizes you, "Home from a harrowing experience, and there's something I'm looking to buy, then I'm off southeast again. Say, where exactly have I found myself? This is the closest thing to a marked border I've met yet out here."

"You're still in the Wastes, of course, but this part of it is Morata County; it's people are under the protection of the Countess Morata, who is one of the Emperor's vassals."

He looks to the sled, and back to you.

"The toll for crossing with a vehicle is one mark. Silver or stone?"

"I see." 'The Emperor' hmm? What Emperor. She has no idea.

The sled vanishes with a snap of the finger.

...She searches through her pack for the small bag of valuables she came to with, hiding it from view. There's gemstones, and metal coins. Which one is a mark? Silver, hm. There's some silver coins in there. She picks one of the biggest ones.

--She shows it to Daisy and makes what she hopes are Meaningful Questioning Glances in the direction of the guards.

Daisy frowns in concentration, and replies in a low voice. "I think that looks about right, for a Mark? They're charging you like you're a merchant with a cart, but with that many gems, you can definitely afford it."

"-Yeah, no sense making trouble where there is none," she whispers.

She will walk forward slowly and present the big silver coin to the spokesguard with a confident nod. Plus two of the smaller ones. "Keep on keeping, sirs."

He takes it, and returns a genuine smile before waving Wynn on. "Safe travels."

They'll get back on her construct sled (which she remakes) and speed across the bridge and keep going, then.

This side of the river certainly does seem more civilized. Forests are logged, fields are planted, and people are occasionally seen. It's definitely rural, but it's no longer wilderness.

She's glad she didn't go off and attack anyone. Even if this newfound prosperity comes with a Countess, which could be bad in all sorts of interesting ways.

"Seems like a lot has changed, but let me know when you see the place?"

"I remember a Baron. He didn't do much but show up every now and then to demand taxes, and his troops were little more than bandits. At least this lot has uniforms, and pretends to be civilized."

The odd farmhouse can be seen, not too far from the road. Wynn and Daisy draw curious glances from farmers as they travel.

She investigates the populace as they go. Mostly human, or plenty of fox-people and cat-people and devils or something and other anime-isms?

At least half the people are visibly human. Most of the rest have some kind of animalistic features, with lizard-like features being somewhat common, and a wider mix of mammalian features can also be seen. Mostly, there are small family groups with similar traits, but the houses and plots trend larger and better-developed as you continue.

Some of the people seem to be slaves, in that they're working in rags and cuffs, and are wearing collars that look similar to the one that Luna was wearing, if heavier and less fancy. The majority of slaves are nonhuman, and the only non-human slave owners are the ones with lizard-like features. Mostly, the slaves seem to be working the land near the nicer houses, but one farm has several women with fur, horns, and hooves in place of hands and feet; they're penned up and grazing on all fours, as if they're literally just cattle.

"So, yeah. Slaves. And human primacy," She comments angrily. "I thought slavery didn't make economic sense? Fuck's sake." Sigh. "It'd be stupid to go and try some sort of ... revolution. I'm not gonna blow everything I meet up, no. But I hate this."

"There've always been slaves?" She seems a little confused by the 'economic sense' line of reasoning, "Legally, it's mostly like, criminals and captured enemies. When the beastfolk tribes come raiding from the woods, any of them that get captured are fair game; they do the same to us. Sometimes, mercenary groups will raid them back and bring home slaves."

"It's inhumane! But, whatever, non-moral arguments work better. Way I heard it... Slaves don't actually work very hard compared to people you pay, and you still have to feed and house 'em, and there's always the risk of disobedience. Maybe the collars work better here and change the math. Loving Fuvley. Anyone ever go free? Like, legally, not some kind master?"

"That doesn't sound right? A careless master giving bad orders can work their slaves to death by accident. It was, like, half my job seeing to the injuries of wounded slaves, or making Restful Sleep potions to help worn-out slaves recover. Slave collars can be destroyed with the right magic... but it's pretty expensive to do, so it's not common."

"Yeah, that's the whole problem, it looks like you just have much better ways to compel action. That'd do it I guess, since the step of considering a thinking, feeling being and wondering how you can reduce them to a tool seems easy. Ugh. -I need one of those, or at least the technique, I - trying it naively did not work."

On and on they sled.

There's not much further to go; the road leads into an area marked off by a wooden palisade, overlooked by wooden guard towers. This is probably the place.

The guards here are a little shabbier, but the same heraldry can be seen on cloaks and banners. On the other hand, there's also more of them. Wynn and her passenger attract a fair bit of attention as they make their way towards the gates.

She slows down as they approach.

"Hail!"

That's what you say instead of 'hi', right?

"I've found someone from this place trapped by captive-taking flowers in the wilds, and escorted her home."

"Hail?" Judging from the guard's confused look, this does not seem to be the local custom, but Wynn's followup statement gets more attention. Wynn's passenger quickly attracts a great deal of scrutiny. "We don't often get people back from the wilds; usually, they don't want to leave." His gaze takes in her pregnant, but visibly unmutated form. "We'll need to check her to make sure she's safe... but assuming so, that's a good deed you've done. I suppose you're an adventurer?"

Wynn's passenger disrobes and submits herself to examination (and some groping) by the guards without comment.

"Well, she might want to go back. Suppose I am an adventurer, I guess. Long, long story." She frowns at Daisy, unsure if this is... Okay? "...I'd like to see the market probably, since I'm already here."

Daisy doesn't look happy about this, but she doesn't put up a fight as the guards examine her teeth, pour white powder into her ears, and poke fingers into her ass and pussy.

"Suit yourself," says the guard, "I'll check you once I'm done with her."

She bristles.

"That depends," she says, "On what exactly you intend to check."

The guard raises an eyebrow, and looks at Wynn more closely. He's not unaffected by the sight, but puts up a professional front.

"Checking for parasites. Standard procedure, with folk out of the wild. Whole towns have been lost to the things, burrowing through people's skulls in the night and eating their brains. Nasty business, and completely incurable, so we have to check every newcomer."

Zoinks. She's clean, she's almost certainly sure, but that's ... unsettling.

Still.

"...Is there an alternate check available, such as utility or holy magic?" She says dryly, digging out another big silver coin and waving it so it catches the sun.

The guard frowns, and it's not quite clear whether he's more happy with the thought of someone sneaking by him unchecked, or that he might not get to personally examine Wynn. The coin attracts his attention, though.

"Well, we are fortunate enough to have a decent mage in town. I suppose I could get him to examine you instead."

"I appreciate it. Hopefully you and your buddies can enjoy a round on me later for the... Inconvenience." She throws the coin. It's a good toss, going straight to easy catching height. "Too bad I didn't think of the power of silver sooner, though," she says a bit quieter.

The guard nods, and hurries into town. Wynn's escortee is finished her checks in short order; she gives an awkward wave to Wynn as she's led inside.

Before too long, a familiar figure exits the gates. He's visibly surprised to see Wynn, but doesn't make a scene as the guard brings him out front.

What.

She grabs the Tentacle Wand from where it's resting on her glowing sled and raises it.

-And lowers it, but doesn't quite let go.

"I'm not imagining it, am I? You tested me and then backed the fuck off when I wasn't helpless, last time I saw you."

Wynn's aggressive action draws quite a bit of attention, and several crossbows are quickly pointed at her.

The man, for his part, smiles without mirth, and doesn't bother to raise a defence. "The wilderness is full of feral beasts in need of taming. You've proven yourself better than them, so you've earned the right not to be treated like them. So far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it... unless you've come to test yourself against me?"

"I'm no beast, and I'm not going to be tamed. Nor am I going to start something for shits and giggles, no matter what I think of that. But perhaps there's a trade to be had here. I happen to be in want of a way to disable the collars you seem so fond of. Not to use against you here, but for something as far as I know - totally unrelated."

"Well, if you're willing to behave yourself, then that's the end of that."

He waves to the guards, who lower their crossbows, but continue watching.

"Now, I hear that the first thing you wanted was for me to check you for parasites." He smirks at Wynn as he looks her up and down, "Too modest to do that the normal way?"

"You are correct, on that front." She rolls her eyes.

"I can do so slowly and at a distance for five marks... or quickly and with a touch for one."

He leers at Wynn, and makes a squeezing gesture with his hand, "Which would you prefer?"

Gross. Keep your lip up. You're a powerhouse now, and this is just posing. Spraying tags.

"Seems kind of moot if I'm not going to enter the walls, doesn't it? I know I'm clean."

He shrugs artfully, "Fine. I'm not in the habit of discussing sensitive business out in the open... and anything related to the workings of my trade is definitely that... so if you don't plan to enter the walls, we have nothing further to discuss."

So saying, he turns to go.

Five silver coins land on the ground near him.

He turns, still smirking, and scoops the coins into a pocket before casting: "Volchirr Vinkenlo."

Blood vessels bulge around his eyes as he gazes at Wynn, looking her up and down, and staring intently at her erogenous regions. Wynn has the sense that to this sight, she's worse than naked.

That's rather what it implies, isn't it? A thorough enough check would be as detailed as an X-ray, and less clinical.

...Huh. He said 'em all out loud instead of doing the twisty-pulling-inside-you thing silently. Does he, perhaps, have to say them out loud? Is he not as good as her? Though she doesn't recognize 'vol'.

Maybe. Maybe maybe. She tries not to let this sudden realization show. It's not that hard, feeling this uncomfortable, thank you glitchy intuition...

Eventually, he finishes his examination. "She's clean," he says to the guards, before turning back to Wynn.

"Now, if you have further business with me, there's a lovely little tavern in town with discreet booths. Join me for a drink?"

He walks off arrogantly, clearly assuming that Wynn will hurry after him.

She will walk at a reasonable pace after him, after double checking that her floating bag is warded against theft and taking several deep breaths to push down the anger. 

Because, going Skitter here would probably just make everything worse, and she as much as offered truce. So. Yes. Calm. Stop instinctively drawing tendrils of mana through the magic node for fire and towards chirr.

And so he leads Wynn to his favorite tavern. Wynn can't help but notice that all the waitresses here are wearing heavy slave collars, alongside extremely skimpy outfits that reveal matching womb tattoos.

He doesn't even speak as he enters. He just snaps his fingers without breaking stride, and three waitresses hurry to obey his unspoken orders. One brings a bottle of wine and glasses, one begins assembling a platter of cheese and meat, and a third hurries behind him to the table in the corner booth, crawling underneath it as he sits.

A smooth lake. A gentle breeze. Piano music. Starting a fight would make everyone here's lives worse.

"-Are you fucking serious," she mutters at the table-ducking woman. A bit louder, "I thought you wanted us to have a private discussion if any business was to be had?"

He chuckles. "I've trained them well, and marked them to suit their tasks. None of these girls will hear a word they are not permitted to hear, nor speak a word they are not permitted to speak, nor remember a fact that I order them to forget. Between that and the wards I put on these booths, our conversation will be as private as possible."

He looks Wynn in the eye as a wet choking noise can be heard from beneath the table. "Does it bother you?"

Could she fight her way out of this place, if she suddenly lashed out?

Her intuition, her sixth sense, is not completely quiescent. But nor is it blaring alarms of DOOM into her head, like it did for some of the bigger things in the jungle when she first scouted it only to NOPE out. The biggest threat is right in front of her. Some of the other guards are concerning, but she's fast and has magic and could go stealthy. It'd be risky. But she has enough of a chance to buoy her confidence, here.

"...It seems, we cannot work together on this."

She turns around and leaves, paying very close attention to her danger sense as she marches back out the town gate.

-Well, actually. Actually. She walks around the place a bit first, since she went through that indignity to get in. Maybe there's something interesting in the market. She can see how her rescuee is doing too, perhaps.

The slaver chuckles as Wynn departs, not being especially invested in doing business with her either way, and having other distractions to entertain himself with. Considering her danger sense... he genuinely doesn't intend her harm at this point, and quite seriously will not be the one to act first. If it did come to a fight though, it'd be a very bad idea to leave him hostile, nearby, and undistracted. The guards similarly don't intend harm, but are less dangerous in general, except possibly in groups.

As for the market, it's nothing spectacular, mostly just a simple farmers' market to service the surrounding community. Almost everything here is either sold by or to a farmer; there's plenty of fresh and preserved food, simple craftwork like rope and candles, and a meager selection of basic hand tools being offered by a peddlar. The most interesting offering is the apothecary, which is where Wynn runs into her rescuee; she seems to have been having an argument with the stall owner. The shouting is all over by the time Wynn gets close enough to overhear, but neither of the two looks particularly happy with the other.

Well, she knows where to find her next time.

She makes camp in another earthen hut, not too far away but in a relatively isolated spot. One of the less thoroughly managed forests. She hides most of it underground, too.

...She feels really horny for some reason. They were totally ogling her earlier - it was gross, but honestly, was it really that bad? Kinda hot, even. To be wanted instead of ignored.

-She doesn't have a secret slavery fetish, does she? No, no, the idea is terrifying, disgusting, a massive turn off in her mind - that does nothing for how horny she is, though.

Those plants, with thick tentacled cocks... Wouldn't it be amazing to just let go, let herself be wrapped up and just fucked silly? For a while, at least. Until she's satisfied.

Maybe she could go find those gate guards from before. They were at least sort of respectable. They'd paw at her, pin her arms behind her back. Tear off her pants and grab her tail. Maybe they'd feed her aphrodisiacs, and there's a reason she had some of her own for Luna to get into. Personal use.

She doesn't want any of that to actually happen. But it's really hot to imagine.

...She makes a dildo out of rock, and carefully smoothes it down with Earth magic, and cleans it. Then, lying down on her little bedroll, starts rubbing it over her pussy, over and over, even as her other hand plays with her tits.

It's a burning need in her core, a warmth that only feels more excited when she returns to her fantasies. A wolf pinning her down and mounting her, filling her with that massive cock and with warm seed. A hot muscular futanari telling her to kneel and suck her cock. A cool playboy getting her drunk and caressing her all over until she shows him her pussy... God, she's a pervert. It's the isekai body or some sort of aphrodisiac, it has to be.

She's rubbing the dildo in and out of her cunt, now. Clenching and tensing and squeezing around it. Honestly, it needs to be bigger. It needs to fuck her on its own, like one of those piston-driven machines.

She sits up and bites her lip. She mounts the dildo to the compressed-dirt floor and spends a few minutes making it... Knobblier. Add some extra shapes. Ridges. Like something from Bad Dragon rather than a plain cylindrical shape, one of those that she's touched herself to but never dared to actually buy.

Yeah. This'll work. She kneels over her new monstrosity and s l o o w l y lowers herself onto it, working her way down. Every inch she impales herself makes her feel deliciously fuller, as she clenches around the oversized thing and feels the ridges rubbing against her cunt.

Trying to ... there's no other word, ride this monster cock is kind of difficult. She's never done this before, and the motion feels strange, even though her pussy stretches around it just fine, no chafing, no soreness. Just hot liquid warmth invading her so so deeply. Her hands clench on her knees as she moves her hips back and forth just enough to feel every bump and ridge, as she fantasizes and imagines it's a dragon, it's an aphrodisiac-dripping plant monster, it's an incubus who rings with power and temptation and- 

-She cums. It's the best orgasm she's had in a while. And she doesn't feel satisfied. After a few minutes' rest, she starts working the dildo again, only the first couple of inches this time, but thrusting her hips back and forth so it hits all the lovely spots in her cunt, like her fingers but firmer, better. It doesn't take long as she fondles her nipples and rubs lightly at her cunt as she rocks her hips back and forth, to come to a second orgasm.

After that, at least, she seems to be satisfied. For now. Though there's still a frustrating undercurrent, a horniness that refuses to go away and has her shifting in her sleep.

She dreams. A cloud forest, a place of cliffs and thunder and wild overgrowth and snarling sounds in the dark.

He's not going to change, and he's not going to stop. You could just kill him, you know. You're strong enough to have a very good chance. You would be removing a blight upon the world, an unnatural chain that chokes it.

No killing. That's her response, that filters up in the dream realm, though the filtered logic of unconsciousness. Wynn with no last name she wants to claim, is not a murderer. Maybe she'll end up one, like Skitter, but it's utter hubris to compare herself to the Queen of Escalation anyway. She's more blindly lashing out than Skitter's calculated aggression.

...I think I would have liked this 'Skitter'. Quite the memorable warlord, it seems.

Very well, if your decision is made. Theft is almost as good, anyway, if it's by your own cleverness and power that you succeed in it. Don't be stupid, little fox. If you die, it's your fault.

"...What a weird dream."

The next morning, her unnatural lust is ... Still there. But she's horny enough that it's really not hard to masturbate, at least, and that keeps the worst of it away. It's distracting, but she has a mission to accomplish.

She sketches out everything she remembers of the walled town's layout, from her brief visit inside the walls to the tavern. The tavern too, since it seems like it might be 'home base', as it were. She thinks about the walls, and tries to figure out if she could climb over them. How might she get detected? Sight and sound, most obviously... Air magic can dampen sound. Binding that into runes so she doesn't have to maintain it the whole way will be slightly tricky.

She sneaks closer to the town again, watching the walls and the guards from a distance. Do they walk outside the walls? Or along the top? Do they seem lazy and bored enough to ignore her at night?

The town walls aren't made to be walked along; they're a palisade, a fence of sharpened stakes tall enough to deter most climbers, and force legitimate traffic to enter through the gates. It wouldn't exactly be easy to climb the wall, but it wouldn't be any harder than it would be to climb over a row of thin and limbless trees. The palisade is supplemented by wooden watchtowers; some of these mount ballistas, while the others are staffed by crossbowmen, enough ranged firepower to encourage most creatures to seek easier prey. At night, the guards make do with torches to give them a somewhat clear view of their surroundings, and there are bells to ring if any serious threat is spotted. Most likely, though, such a threat would be noticed sooner by an attack on the outlying farms, so if the guards don't have special reason to be on alert, they tend to be a little lazy.

There are regular patrols, even at night, but it's a fairly simple pattern. A patrol leaves from the eastern gate to circle the walls once every hour, and they finish their route after about 15 minutes. A second patrol leaves from the western gate to make a round of the neighboring farmlands twice a day (just after dawn and just before dusk), to keep an eye out and make sure nothing has gone wrong. Notably, each patrol has one person carrying a magic spear; once, you catch it being used as a tentacled thing springs up from underground, and the spearman stabs deep into the earth to kill the attacking creature.

Her observations and preparations are a little rushed, on account of needing to get back to Luna and keeping being... Distracted. It's getting a bit worse over time, as if masturbating is not quite enough. 

It's honestly really unpleasant when she's trying to fight past it, the constant need. Even if masturbating is fun and distracting, she doesn't want to be distracted right now.

Even though the patrols could maybe stumble upon her fingering herself and clap her in chains before she can react-

N o p e. Okay, yes, that's kind of hot in the moment, but way too squick long term. Pulling on that disgust helps her focus.

She practices climbing trees. She's nimble, DEX monster, like she observed right at the beginning. And magic tinkering is really absorbing, as long as she takes it in short enough chunks that she doesn't drift off into a fantasy and ruin a segment. She can make, with a full day, a crude silencing doohickey. That she hides inside her clothes so the glow won't give her away. She doesn't try to make gecko pads for her hands, but experiments until she gets something that works. Construct magic, to make gloves with lots of surface area and those microscopic gripping surfaces. Her foot-claws are pretty grippy already.

It's not conveniently cloudy, but that just means she has to stick to the shadows.

She sleeps and waits for twilight. She climbs over the wall, slowly, quietly, five minutes after the hourly patrol passes, well after the farm patrol has gotten back, peering over the sharpened stakes at the top to see if anyone is looking in her direction.

It's late twilight, getting on towards dusk. Nobody's looking for her in particular, and the sentinels on the nearest watchtower are paying more attention to their dice game than their surroundings. The streets are fairly quiet at this hour, though there's still some foot traffic, but many buildings are lit.

Her ears and tail are fairly distinctive, there's not a lot of large-eared and tailed demihumans around from what she's seen. But she doesn't have a proper hood and when she tried tying the ears down like an unruly ponytail it was wildly uncomfortable. And the tail helps her balance. 

She kips over the spikey top of the wall with a smooth motion, and drops straight to the ground, absorbing the fall with her legs and the sound with her runebound silencer where it rests against her side.

She heads for the center of town, sticking to spots of low visibility. The shadows next to buildings, ducking under windows, and checking surreptitiously around corners before crossing streets and alleys. Something tells her she wants to avoid rooftops, as assassins-creed-y as it would be.

-Right, watchtowers. They can see all the rooftops.

Towards the center of town she goes, fearful of being spotted at any moment.

Actually. Since she's here, she should probably confirm where her rescuee/kidnapee Daisy is living? She seemed to be taking over the old apothecary.

...And so, Wynn diverts from her twilight raid on the slaver's tavern to spy on an apothecary.

There's definitely a few people walking around who could potentially spot Wynn. They aren't especially observant, not being particularly on-guard while in town. Still, Wynn has to do quite a bit of sneaking to avoid possible notice.

The apothecary itself is apparently closed, but a dim light glows in the back.

She sneaks up to the back window, as the falling sun bathes the whole town in steadily deepening shadow that she seems to almost melt into.

It might not be Daisy. But she did promise to check back, and ferry her back to safety if she wanted. Slaver band or not, that still holds. She taps on the back window and whispershouts (coming out to about normal conversation volume), "Daisy? It's Wynn!"

After a few moments, the shutters are opened, and Daisy peers out.

"Oh good," she says, stepping into view of the light from inside. "Hi, uh. Checking on you... I guess."

The fireplace's light doesn't do too much to illuminate Wynn from across the room and through the window; with the last of the sunlight fading away, the rising (and notably tentacular) moon is providing more light than anything from inside... but the combination is enough for Daisy to recognize Wynn.

"Hi yourself," says Daisy, looking rather frustrated, and definitely still 'pregnant'.

"Yeah, uh. I'm- Being sneaky." She blushes, feeling kind of stupid. "Because I thiiiink I might not be welcome here but I still want to keep my promise and, like, arrange a signal to check later. Or something. Also apologize for making everything harder than it has to be."

"Why wouldn't you be welcome?"

In response to Wynn's apology, Daisy sighs, "Well... I'm not really enjoying things here and still probably want to go back once I've arranged a place for my seeds, but I think I'm starting to understand why you pulled me out, even when I didn't want you to. I'm not happy, but I'm also... more of a person? I can forgive you for that much, at least."

"Well, I still need to know how to mess with collars, but Mr. Bossman over there is fucking disgusting and I couldn't stand trying to- Negotiate or something. So I need to get that another way, right? Which is gonna make him mad. And- More of a person, yeah." Sigh. "Anything I can do to help? Maybe I should come inside if we're going to be talking for a while though."

Daisy nods, and opens the back door, letting Wynn inside.

"I guess I've got two problems right now. The first is that I need to find a safe place for my seeds, but there aren't many farmers who want great big aphrodisiac flowers growing anywhere near their lands, so I'm going to need another escort into the wilderness for that. The second... well, I don't think I'm drugged any more, but..."

She blushes, "I'm still, like, constantly horny, but no matter what I do, I can't seem to deal with it, and I just feel so empty all the time. I even tried offering myself to the guards, but no one wants to fuck me while I'm still full of strange seeds."

"I'll certainly escort you out, for that, yeah. - I don't know if you're just - I don't know how that stuff works. I've been way too horny for the last couple of days too. I - I - could make you a, erm. You know."

She makes a jerk-off motion, looking to the side.

"Out of rock, not fancy silicon or anything, but, yeah."

It takes a few moments for Daisy to get what Wynn's implying, but when she does, her blush intensifies.

"Um... that might help? I guess I could, uh... try it?"

"Yeah yeah, I mean, every girl oughta have one if she wants one, worth a try, least I can do, or or or, or something."

So.

How does she ask this random woman she's kidnapped and is pregnant with aphrodisiac rapemonster seeds what kind of dildo she would like?

...She doesn't? Yeah. That works. She can just not ask and thus avoid making it even more awkward. 

"I'll get on that then, just a bit of Earth magic. Just need somewhere to sit."

Daisy gestures to a stool beside the workbench, conveniently near the fireplace. Some half-processed herbs can be seen (and smelled, kind of like potpourri) littering the bench.

She recognizes some of this stuff, from her weirdly-installed instincts prompting her to gather some of it. Alchemy, huh?

Well, she sits and focuses mana into her hands. It's a simple spell, just a bit demanding. Slowly, a lump of rock begins forming in her hands. Common sandstone, forming bands as she condenses it somehow. She works it like clay, slowly reshaping it to a long, smooth form. Add a bit more here and there, make it just a bit bigger, shift in her seat and add a little flare here where it'll press nicely on-

-Oops. Focus.

The result is a ten-inch-tall monster, shaped like the vines of the sweety pod flowers, slightly curved with a round, bulbous tip wide enough that it'd be asking a lot for someone without a bit of stretch to take. Well. They both have some stretch, as she's seen.

She spins around, blushing volcanically, and takes a deep breath, eyes closed. "-Er. There. I can go for something more - normal. If you want. I - distracted."

Daisy isn't blushing much less than Wynn, but she takes the plant-shaped dildo nonetheless.

"Thanks; I'll, uh... see if it helps."

"So! The other thing I wanted was, like, some sort of signal? If - I can't come back into town again to actually talk. I can scry but it's not super detailed, so like - something you wouldn't ordinarily do but I could see if I scry outside the apothecary, would mean you want to be escorted out into the wilds, like if you put vases in a specific order or something, it means I should find you somewhere or leave a note. Or something."

Daisy gives Wynn a worried look. "Are you planning to do something that'd prevent you from coming back to town?"

"I- I need to know how the collars work, and the guy who knows is a total asshole! So, yeah! Probably. Unless you've got a better idea. I kind of thought I was barred already even!"

"I didn't hear anything like that! The guards probably would've bothered me about it if you'd done something bad enough to get banned from town?"

"I-

-I dunno then. I... Guess insulting the slaver in charge of the place doesn't count? I was pissed the hell off. But I didn't, uh, actually attack anyone I guess? And I- Huh."

Face: Meet palm. "I was pattern matching to asshole nobles elsewhere, who totally would have tried to arrest me on some sort of pretext, or at least ban me."

"I didn't know him in my past life, but he's officially, like, a warrior priest in thrall to the Countess? He's rich and powerful, but also, like, bound by divine commandment to always obey the law or something like that? One of the other priests was trying to explain it, but he was also trying to argue that I should enslave myself to my ex-apprentice, so I was mostly ignoring him."

Great. Religion. That she knows basically nothing about. At least it sounds - sort of like a cult, and not something everyone knows.

"...Cultists can do the most batshit insane stuff if you push them. Grrrr. I'm not going to buy a slave so he'll show me how the collars work, that's just sick. But I still need to help Luna. Do you know - if there's somewhere else I could learn it? I mean, I'm not bad with magic, it's just the collars are weird and specialized."

Daisy shakes her head, "Sorry, I don't know anything about magic."

"...Then- Yeah. I might be about to do something that could get me banned." Sigh. "I don't know if she's even still okay, I can't get dragged into wandering for months and months. And I - honestly, I don't really respect the law if it allows for slavery."

Daisy's clearly pretty worried about this, "That's probably a bad idea, but if you've got someone else you're trying to save..."

She pauses, taking a deep breath, "Well... if you're going to do that anyway, and you want some kind of signal from me when I'm ready to go, there's a thing I could do that'd make a lot of red smoke? I wouldn't do it by accident, it'd smell awful, but it'd be pretty easy to see."

"I need to also be looking when it happens, or if it leaves distinctive stains... Say, do it at sunset and I'll scry the apothecary every day around sunset?"

Daisy nods, "Okay. When I'm ready, I'll send up red smoke at sunset."

"And I'll check every day. Might have to scale that back to once a week or something in the long term, though."

Daisy considers this.

"Well... likely as not, the seeds will be coming out on Birthday. If they are, I'll probably notice on the Rainday before, and send up smoke on that evening."

"I've been," dropped into this world with no context, "Uh, we used different words for the days, how many days until Rainday? And could you name the days, sorry."

"The days of the week, as we identify them, are Hearthday, Honeday, Dustday, Breezeday, Stormday, Rainday, and Birthday," explains Daisy, "Dustday is just ending, so in three more days it will be Rainday."

"Right, I'll do my best to remember that. It might be a couple days between seeing your sign and coming for you." Deep breath. "...Might be time to get to it."

Daisy nods solemnly, "Good luck, I guess?"

"Good skill might be better than good luck. Or good prudence to not do this in the first place, but..." Shrug. "Goodbye, for now."

She stands taller, and then she's out the door and on the streets again, moving between houses to work around towards the tavern.

It's a little darker, now, with the last glow of twilight extinguished, and the moon higher in the sky... though the orb itself isn't quite round, and instead has visibly-moving appendages. The silvery light still offers decent visibility, allowing Wynn to make her way along the now-emptier streets, alongside closed shops and darkened homes. There are still occasional lights, here and there... but not many; aside from the guards, most people seem to be at home.

She finally notices the moon's weirdness. Somehow she hadn't really been... Paying attention earlier?

It's really weird. Gives her the creeps, Majora's Mask style. Is it gonna come down and consume the world?

...Nothing she can do about it. What she can do is sneak closer to the tavern-

Actually, what she should do is find a nice secluded spot behind a chimney or something and take a few minutes to cup water in her hands and scry the layout of the tavern. Kind of embarrassing she didn't do that sooner. Has she really planned this at all?

There's plenty of hiding places around, since it's dark and the streets are empty. So long as Wynn's careful to stay out of line of sight of the watchtowers and doesn't actually walk openly down the middle of the street, she ought to be fairly safe.

So she scries the insides of the tavern, or at least tries to aim the viewing point through windows and around and figure out where the guy's office is before she's sneaking through the place.

Wynn's having trouble finding a suitable scrying point. Her magic probes out, looking for suitable surfaces to reflect from... there are plenty around in a town like this, but many aren't actually in the right building, and when Wynn manages to pinpoints the tavern itself, she finds that the curtains on the windows are shut (giving her an obscured view of a dark and empty common room). There's a really nice and obvious scrying point further inside, but it reveals darkness, with just the faintest hint of a wood pattern... a mirror on the inside of a vanity cabinet?

-Right, scrying isn't a game camera. Her other method of finding things won't do her any better...

With a sigh she crosses the street while nobody seems to be looking and finds another hiding spot right near the tavern. In through the door, or a window? Doors are more noticeable...

She tries to search the outside of the tavern for signs of, like, alarm magic or anything else.

There aren't any obvious warding runes on the outside of the building... but then again, there wouldn't need to be, not unless they wanted to advertise their security.

She listens at the door for a while, then...

-Wait. There's a lock. She investigates it and quickly manifests a small rake. "Probably just pins? Heh, Lock Picking Lawyer coming in handy here. Lock picking lawyer here, today we're breaking into a tavern..."

She starts working over the lock. It was never much more than a vaguely appropriate hobby for her, opening locker room quality padlocks and bike locks to show off for friends, but yeah, it's pretty clearly pins, and she can hear them snap into place so clearly as she adjusts what quickly becomes just a Construct Magic copy of the actual key. Which she turns, unlocking the door and quietly shutting it behind her. She checks the room briefly before padding as quick as she can while being quiet over to the door deeper into the place.

With the lock providing minimal security, Wynn finds herself in the tavern's darkened interior. A door leading to the backroom is closed (but not locked), and leads to a short hallway, dimly lit by the occasional candle. It connects a couple of doorless areas (a kitchen and pantry), a couple of locked doors, as well as a narrow staircase leading up, and a heavy trapdoor leading down. A thin crack of light up from the trapdoor, accompanied by muffled grunting and the crack of a whip, suggests that the basement is occupied.

If the basement is occupied, all the luckier for her. He'll be busy down there.

The next locks don't present much more obstacle. She picks each one, one after another, to check what's behind them, aware the clock is ticking.

The first room is a storeroom. It contains a variety of valuable-looking items, including piles of gold ingots, bags of gems, armour and weapon racks (some of which bear obviously-enchanted gear), torture implements (some of which also seem to be enchanted), jewelry boxes (mostly featuring uncomfortable-looking piercings), and a half-dozen collars... five of which look much like those worn by the common slaves, but one of which is especially fancy, and reminds Wynn of the collar around Luna's neck.

On the wall just inside the storeroom, a metal plaque displays a series of runes, some of which are flashing red. Seeing it in a room like this, Wynn is instantly reminded of an alarm system, demanding a password of one who has entered a secure area.

She hisses in alarm, then immediately grabs the fanciest collar and one of the less-fancy ones, then-

-Okay she has a small satchel but that's it, she wasn't expecting a lot of loot, loot is not the point, but this is shiny loot but alarm, so- She grabs a couple of the least bulky enchanted items, stuffs them in the bag, and then runs, having spent about fifteen seconds in the room. Out the treasury, out the tavern door and dashing across the street before she can think to look for any guards coming this way.

She's not thinking anything more complicated than 'oh, shit' at the moment, but if she was - well, she didn't come here to rob anyone blind, just to fix her fuckup with Luna and free her. Leaving the jewels and stuff is fine.

Wynn makes it to the front door before she hears an a loud alarm beginning to sound, which is not the sort of thing that'd make her run slower. The streets are still quiet and dark, except for the moonlight.

Running: That!

She does calm down enough to think before reaching the spot on the walls where she came over. She slows down and tries to listen and look from a spot in the shadows for where the guards are now. Probably on high alert, so. 

There's definitely a noise coming from the tavern, but it's not quite as loud from outside. Hidden in a bush, Wynn hears a trio of guards walk by, heading towards the tavern. They don't seem to be in a great hurry.

-Clamber back over the palisade wall in the same far-from-watchtowers spot as before? It's the watchtower guards she's really concerned with, are they alert now?

By the tune Wynn sneaks her way to the walls, the guards on the watchtower she passed last time are standing up and looking around instead of squatted down playing dice, so they're more alert now than they were.

Okay, so.

She knows how to lay down modifications to her spells. A one time thing compared to the runebinding, but very useful. It takes longer and it's more draining, but she can do it.

What she does is quickly work her way to a point a quarter-turn away from her chosen exit, and lay down a glowing magic circle with a few runes for some multicolored spears of fire to lance into the sky, and one more important rune: Delay. Four minutes.

And then back to her chosen exit spot, breathing hard from the adrenaline and exertion, to wait for that timer to tick down.

In the distance (near the tavern?), Wynn can hear some kind of commotion. Still, Wynn's spell goes off at the scheduled time, and the guards on the wall sure are distracted! There's shouting, and someone is ringing a bell!

Perfect cover to clamber up over the wall in the shadow of the moon, fall the whole way down the other side, and-

-Run. Like. HELL! All the way back to her dugout-hideout, to retrieve the rest of her stuff, and then further. South, south, and more south.

One of the guards is just quick enough to snap off a shot with his crossbow. A bolt smashes into the ground near Wynn, throwing up some dust after embedding itself in the dirt.

Aside from another moment of YEEP! this does not really change her immediate plans. The running will continue. Back to her hideout, and gathering up her stuff. But she's not far enough to be safe, no way. She keeps going, straight south, which seems to be the fastest way away from civilization.

Heading south definitely takes her away from the road, away from the farms, away from any lights, away from civilization. If there's anything like pursuit, Wynn doesn't hear it at this point.

She keeps going, summoning her construct-sled to go faster once most of the obstacles of civilization are gone.

Makes her own makeshift camp and sleeps several hours later when she's getting too tired to keep going smoothly, and then the next morning... Or well, the next afternoon, actually bothers to inspect her loot. She was hoping for notes on how the collars work, but...

Instead, Wynn got a couple of slave collars (one fancier than the other), a jewelry box with a dozen spiky glowing piercings in it, and a short rod that looks something like a branding iron, with a weird runic shape on the end?

She spends a few hours looking over them, following the runes as they play out.

Jesus Fucking H Christ, these things are nasty. The earrings are torture implements, or rather, conditioning implements. Do something very painful on immediate response to magic, or certain thoughts... Which thoughts, she can't quite tell. The collars merit more observation, they're just as complex and tangly as Luna's. The weird branding poker thing... Is also incredibly fucking complicated, which makes her think they kind of go together?

She sketches out all the rune patterns into her handy magic book and starts decomposing them into chunks, modules, to make sense of them.

The nastiest piercing Wynn examines seems straight-up designed to mindbreak its wearer; any thoughts more complicated than immediately obeying orders will be punished, and the harder they're trying to think the worse they're punished, presumably with the end goal that the wearer just stops having thoughts. They're surprisingly intricate work for what amounts to a couple inches of brass plate with a piercing hook mounted, but every bit of the space available is covered in tight, efficient runework, and between the set of them, there's a lot of patterns for using runes to sense various mental states. They'd probably make a little more sense to Wynn if she was familiar with mental magic, but if she wants to make magic items that trigger from mental actions, there are pieces of the solution she wants here, if she's got the stomach to disentangle it.

Exposed to Wynn's examination, the collars have a lot of similar workings; they're designed to sense something like the mental states of obedience and disobedience. The former is rewarded with... happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction? The latter is punished with... physical and emotional pain? There's a lot to examine, but the fancier collar seems like an elegant and complex tool for gradually conditioning the wearer to only truly feel satisfied when they are obeying orders to the best of their ability, and to make any disobedient action or thought unpleasant enough to be not worth considering. The fancy collar also seems much older, and much more permanent, than anything else from the heist... more like Wynn and Luna's "Isekai items" and less like the kind of stuff she's figured out how to slap together. The cruder collar seems like a fragile amateurish attempt at recreating the fancy artistry of the first with more legible techniques, trading a lot of the subtle elegance of the former's reinforcement patterns in favour of hitting harder with its highs and lows, and draining the wearer's mana pool to sustain itself. A lot of the rune sections on both collars are weirdly illegible, but with the fancy collar it feels more like tracing a bunch of really complex interactions written in machine language, and with the latter it feels more like trying to follow some hack of a programmer's deliberately obfuscated code.

That said, there's definitely a lot of similarities between the confusing loops of the cheap collar's runework, and the complex patterns of the branding poker. It's like the rod is a piece of a puzzle the collar represents, and its purpose is to provide a very specific signal that the collar is looking for so that the collar can do... something? Carefully examining the rune-chunk on the actual branding part, it seems to line up well with similar rune-chunks at the ends of the collar. So if the collar were to be closed around someone's neck, the poker would best fit into the runework if placed right across the gap.

The key difference is obviously that the simpler collars just have the magic bound into them while the complicated one has it etched. She's noticed the two different methods she understands, and the etching work is... Impressive. Master craftsman stuff, even compared to what she can achieve with cheat skills. 

Too bad she'll never fucking use any of this. The best she can do is copy it out and try to salvage some of the techniques for something actually good. Wrest a weapon from the very foes of liberty and turn it to the cause of freedom... Yeah, she can make herself study how, precisely, it's screwing with peoples' heads. Though if she had a library to work with it'd be easier...

First priority, though, is figuring out what is obviously an unlocking mechanism. She doesn't have anyone to test it on, but she can see how it would work, with the chance to trace her finger directly over the paths. It reminds her of Zachtronics games, or absurd bitwise code hacks like that fast inverse square root meme.

Anything like that on the fancy, Luna's-collar-ish, collar?

The fancy collar certainly has some kind of closing mechanism. It could probably connect to an unlocking device, there's something like a port for one. It doesn't look like it's designed to connect to the same device that the cheap collar does, though. If the empty spaces on each collar is like a keyhole, the cheap collar is like the old-timey medieval warded locks she picked earlier, and the fancy collar is a complex disc detainer lock with false gates. That said... Wynn does have direct access to all the runework, so figuring it all out is mostly just the challenge of fitting the whole mess in her head (and notebook), methodically working through the conditions at each step.

That said... a dirty hole in the middle of nowhere isn't the comfiest place to do this kind of tedious magical programming work.

Yeah, time to get back to her hut and hope Luna is still there and doesn't hate her.

"Wait, Daisy. Right. Today is... Breezeday, so two days from now at sunset I have to scry for her place. I'd better try that now actually."

Luckily, this is reasonably easy to accomplish. A puddle of water, sitting cross-legged, and going into a sort of trance as she casts north, north, north, looking for the points of scryability that indicate towns and specifically the one in Daisy's apothecary mirror...

It's a bit of a mental workout, but Wynn can eventually skim her way back to town. The most visible reflective surfaces are actual mirrors, of course (and there are some specific extra-visible mirrors trying to attract her attention like they're designed to catch incoming scrys), but the most convenient reflective surfaces are windows. Daisy doesn't seem to be working right at this moment, but Wynn can definitely confirm that she can hit her scrying target.

Perfect!

She hasn't seen this part of the Wastes before, but she remembers the landmarks near where she put up her hut. She has a surprisingly good memory now, though it's not photographic exactly. She heads off in that direction via magic sled, planning to refine her course as she gets close.

Hopefully Luna's okay.

The Wastes continue to be the wastes, and various flora and fauna both mundane and exotic can be seen as she travels... most notably including another one of the slimy pink wolves she saw earlier, which begins chasing her sled. It can smell Wynn's lust, and wants to feed on her by filling all her holes with its tentacle cocks, but it's not willing to burn all the energy it'd take to chase her down when she's going that fast, so if she's not going to stop she can just stay horny and unsatisfied.

She swears those fuckin' pink things are telepathic somehow. (Completely missing that it is, in fact, part of her new suite of powers and they're just so much hornier than everything else as to stand out in comparison.) Regardless, no way Jose.

Onwards she sleds, riding out what she increasingly suspects is a "feature" of her new isekai'd body and masturbating... Kind of a lot. Stopping every couple hours for it, and doing it at night too.

Maybe she should stay away until she's done? It'd be kind of mortifying to be in front of Luna again like this... Then again, Luna probably doesn't care. Like. At all. And it is hot, to be so worked up all the time. Just... Not hot enough to fuck a weird slimy pink tentacle monster thing. That's just asking to get parasites planted in her brain, like that town was worried about.

She scries the apothecary every time she stops just to make sure she can still find it even as she gets further away - should she try some of the flashy attention getting spots? Nah, might be a trap, best not - but continues none the less and finds her way back to her hut after high-speed sledding around mid-day on, apparently, Rainday.

As Wynn is approaching her hut, she suddenly notices an unexpected bit of danger, and stops before sledding into an unusually dangerous pile of leaves... which is, on closer inspection, a concealed pit trap, with sharp stakes at the bottom.

Luna's work... Plausibly?

She works out a quick formulation of Air magic to boost her and more importantly to make her voice carry, and shouts. "LUNAAAAAAA!"

There is no immediate response... other than a number of birds taking flight, and shifting shadows beyond the treeline which suggest that Wynn managed to attract some attention to herself.

Well, she can fight them if it becomes necessary.

Whatever.

For now she'll go see what state her little house is in. Maybe put the wards back up. Probably all her smoked meat's gone.

As Wynn gets nearer to her hut, she smells smoke. It's rising from a small wooden shack that Wynn definitely doesn't remember building, tucked neatly within her circle of warding stones.

Did Luna... Build a house? ...Score one for 'human convinced she's a cat somehow, she guesses'.

She pokes around the perimeter of the wards, disabling them long enough to inspect with that little twist that - probably she should crib some notes from the collars' security for her ward rocks, if she can disable them easily another spellcaster can disable them, they're only good against dumb brutes like this - adds more mana to a few of the lowest-powered ones, then checks on her outdoor food cellar, and then investigates her own house's state, and only after all that goes to investigate the new structure.

As predicted, the smoked meat is gone, as is anything else meat-like, including in the nearby cellar. Most of Luna's stuff is still scattered across the floor where she originally left it, though the axe, the harpoon, and the bag itself are gone. Wynn's bed looks slept in, but is not currently occupied.

The new structure is small and windowless, with a chimney-like hole in the ceiling (currently emitting a trail of smoke), but was put together with surprising craftsmanship. Inside is quite a bit of meat, butchered and hanging in crude racks from the ceiling, while a fire set in a stone-lined pit in the dirt floor fills the place with thick smoke. Some of the 'meat' is rather dubious, including large fleshy tentacles with clearly-phallic tips, but the place is already half-full, and clearly has room for more.

She lets out a breath, feeling oddly relieved that Luna isn't here.

-Okay, yeah, dedicated carnivore at work here. This is a lot more than her own little smoking box but it kind of annoys her. It's not bad but it could have been done better. A lot of this isn't going to preserve right, as is, as if it's a well-intentioned but half-hearted attempt at a smokehouse. Also, yuck, more sex monsters. Though they might actually be edible?

She's suddenly glad she doesn't have to use the bathroom anymore.

...Anyway, the smokehouse is not her problem.

She tidies up her house, keeping Luna's stuff separate from hers, and eats a little more of the preserves and hardtack and a bit of Luna's meat, feeling pretty sure she's going to come back at some point. She's still horny, but by this point it's become an annoyance like an old ache, ignored in favor of preoccupation and worrying.

-She should try and look at the stolen collars some more, but it kind of hurts to think about right now.

How about she pours as much mana as she can into the protective runes on her clothes until she feels woozy and a bit sick, then takes a nap in her better-than-trail-conditions bed.

Some time later, Wynn wakes up to a loud thump, just outside!

Where's her spear where- There it is!

Wait, her danger sense isn't going off. She pokes her head out.

Lying on the ground, just outside Wynn's door, is something like a star-faced mole, except it's the size of a bear, and its face-tentacles are as long as its entire body. It's filthy and bleeding and very much dead, and is accompanied by a still-nude Luna, who is none of those things. Did she just... toss the corpse over the ring of ward-stones to get it through?

"...Hi, Luna."

"Hi, Fox!"

Luna nonchalantly hops over the stone circle herself, before sitting next to her kill with a satisfied expression.

"Luna was hunting!"

Avoid looking at her. Or rather, don't, but try not to feel much about it? That doesn't really work, but. She licks her lips and takes a breath.

"I see. I'm Wynn, but... Fox works, I guess. I see you made a smokehouse."

Collar's still there. Maybe... Better not bring it up again until she can do something about it with confidence.

"There was no more meat! Luna got more. Then there was too much meat! Luna made a house for the meat. Now there is room for more meat!"

With Wynn looking away for a moment, Luna crawls over to the corpse and quickly slashes it open from neck to groin... apparently with her bare hand?

"Yyyyyyep. If you want it to last longer I can do more ice. Frozen things don't spoil. Or improve the smokehouse but... I have something I gotta study, ice is fast and building is not.

Sorry for hurting you, last time we met."

Luna looks up from her bloody work with a vacant smile.

"Do not worry. Luna is fine."

Wait, no... that's not it...

Luna hisses, and brings a hand up to touch her collar. It looks like it's burning her, but she holds on with grim determination.

Stop. Let go. No. Don't touch the collar. Luna can do what she wants.

"Hurt, but was helpful! Luna has been practicing!"

Suffer.

She flinches pretty bad, and drops her hand from the collar.

"Yeah."

"...The collar is really terrible. I'm working on a puzzle. If I do it right, I might be able to take it off without it hurting so much. But if you think I should not, I won't."

"Okay. Tell Luna when?"

Without further comment, Luna turns away from Wynn, and gets to disembowelling her tentacled mole.

Okay then.

She wishes she had music to rock out to. One of those 'flow state' playlists. They really do work, or so she thinks. But regardless, she takes another deep breath and pushes away all those disruptive emotions (and thinks vaguely about making a joke about the Adeptus Mechanicus but can't come up with a good quote and that's a distraction too, so) and goes back inside and spreads her notes, and the two stolen collars and the pokey tool, all across the table.

Come on, she knows how the simple locks work, and she's mapped out part of the complicated collar's lock.

After psyching herself up a bit, she uses the single-use version of the rune magic to build a single-use "key", a spell that does the same thing as a dedicated key would but is much faster to try. It's her first decent guess at what the valid key looks like here, and lets it fire off where she holds the collar closed around nothing, watching the results in those painstakingly tiny inscriptions as closely as she can.

There was a sudden flash of danger there... the collar seemed about to grab onto Wynn's wrist, for lack of other prey... but the 'key' wasn't quite right, and the body position wasn't quite ideal, and the 'master' and 'slave' were the same person, so a bunch of error flags got triggered and nothing happened. Unfortunately, the thing doesn't exactly keep a handy error log to let her reference the exact details, so it's hard to review the specifics... but she can already see a couple mistakes she made on her first try.

Also, it'd be helpful to have a test subject for this. Wynn's not quite sure whether or not it's possible to glitch the collar onto herself, but it'd probably be very bad if she succeeded. Also, it won't quite be clear whether or not she succeeded unless she can collar and uncollar someone.

OKAY THEN!

Note to self: Cast Protect Magic to keep the thing in place for next run!

She writes down what she was able to discern, compares it to what she expected, traces out a small part of the magical machinery - there, it got lost there, so if she tries it again in a slightly different way...

...Actually, she'll take a break from this and calm her nerves by runebinding a piece of junk wood left over from something else into a nice, simple, straightforward and brute-force-y force talisman to pin the damned thing in place, then stretch and see about... Dinner? And what Luna's up to, maybe.

Luna has finished dismantling the carcass of the tentacled mole-thing, and has the meatier bits stashed in the smokehouse. This leaves a bloody pile of bone, fur, and gristle, set aside on the dirt, along with a less-significant pile of organs, stacked on something like a large wooden plate... which is getting even smaller as Luna eats it raw.

Well, she seems to be having fun. And if she hasn't gotten sick yet... Sure. Whatever.

She flops on her back and stares up at the sky with a sigh.

Nothing really makes sense anymore. She misses home. "I could be doing something useful or interesting," she says to herself. "But instead I'm a gigantic pile of angst and hormones. Fun."

Luna finishes her meal, surprisingly unbloody for having just butchered and eaten an animal. She scoops up the remains of the carcass, before heading off into the woods with it.

Well, cleanliness magic. She has some too. It's convenient. Isekai thing, maybe.

She actually does get up and follow her briefly at that. "What's that for? Bait?"

Luna shakes her head vigorously.

"No. Luna takes away. Bad smelly thing likes? Not want near."

"Good point. I would've just burned it, but you're strong and don't have magic, I guess."

Luna nods.

"Fire is hard! Luna have to knock down tree, break into bits. Not fun! Luna break tree only when need. Easy to take away smelly bits. Luna do, then hunt more."

"And I really don't wanna go in there 'cause of the nasties. So good luck." Sigh.

She heads back. Luna is Luna.

...It's around sunset, right? She should probably scry the apothecary. It's totally not that she's procrastinating working more on the collar she tried so hard to steal. So, she has a meatless dinner and scries, first.

The especially obvious scrying targets remain as irritatingly distracting as ever, especially at this distance... but Wynn focuses and locates the apothecary through a correctly-pointing window. The apothecary is as it was when Wynn last checked, and lacks red smoke today. Tomorrow evening, perhaps? That'd be 'Rainday', which was when Daisy said she'd be sending her signal.

"Did I screw it up? What even is time, anyway..."

After mulling over the likelihood of it being a trap, she decides to take a quick peek at the especially-shiny spot. Mostly, she admits to herself, because she's bored and thinking about the collars kind of makes her want to scream and cry.

At first, she picks up a view a couple inches away from a wall, but the image quickly rotates, revealing a tired-looking robed man sitting at a desk, who frowns and concentrates on the mirror for a few moments before saying...

"You've reached Grimshire Guildhall, Node 7538. I see that you are not scrying from a registered node; do you have an account number to reference?"

Her eyebrows are: Raised. Like she sort of predicted, they can apparently backtrace her. Something to be careful of.

"Account number? What is this, a bank?"

The man sighs.

"That is among the services we offer, yes. If you had an account with us, such as one tied to a registered scrying node, you could draw upon funds linked to that account to order a number of useful services. Since you don't, keep off my mirror; you've wasted my time, and may be blocking a paying customer."

So saying, he unceremoniously flips the mirror back to point at the wall.

"Rude. What if I wanted to open one?"

But she drops it.

She's kind of run out of excuses not to try poking at the Complicated Kind Of Collar again. She goes and makes sure it's really nicely pinned down and, basically, pokes it a few more times, trying to backtrace out what needs to happen to activate the bit that looks like it deactivates and unlocks everything.

Different errors this time, refining more as Wynn tries and tries again. The key is getting closer to being correct, and gets further through the checking sequence as she refines her model. With the collar being held in place instead of touched, there's also some kind of error that seems to mean something like "target not found, aborting". Perhaps she'd get a more useful result on something closer to being alive? Even one of the severed tentacles in the smokehouse might give a more interesting result than a block of wood.

Yeah, thaaaat's a problem. It's kind of like trying to figure out if a remote control is working while the TV is unplugged?

Like FUCK is she going to go enslave something she might not be able to un-enslave, though.

Whatever. She'll try... One of the less gross tentacles or other bits of meat inside the collar, still with a defensive spell wrapped around her, to see if any more of the complicated magic lights up as she pokes it in different ways.

Even severed, dead, and partially-smoked, the tentacle is kind of magically interesting? Despite clearly not being alive, it's got more energy than might be expected from a dead thing. It's actually kind of useful! Wynn is able to further refine her key pattern like this, until she eventually manages to get the collar to snap shut for a moment before getting an error like "unable to connect to target, aborting".

It's also pretty late out now, and by the time Wynn looks up from her work, there's a naked Luna sleeping in her bed.

Friggin magic monster flesh, she guesses.

She yaaaawns.

...Of course Luna just sleeps there. Why not, right? It's a bed, and it's there. It's too damn late to make a new bed, but she also doesn't want to sleep on the hard ground again, ugh.

Would it be so bad to... Share? She feels the constant low burn of arousal swell.

.....Tempting but also aaaaaaah? It seems like that. Would not lead to sleep happening. It would just work her up more. Besides, in her current mood she seems to be surprisingly het. Like, a lot more than usual. A naked woman is still !! but - she feels like not as much as it should be somehow.

Whatver. Yeah, she's not going to do that. Luna thinks she is a cat, and It Would Be Weird.

She makes a ""bed"" of softened dirt in the kitchen, and resolutely thinks about runes, light and logic chasing each other around. Maybe she'll actually fall asleep at some point, too.

When Wynn wakes up, Luna is already gone.

Lots of picking apart these weird complicated runes on the schedule for today, then.

Well, after a quick breakfast of a bit of Luna's meat, cooked, and some random berries her bonus knowledge says are fine.

She's not going to go enslave something for better data. She's just not. But these things are almost like superconductors in a way, in that if you actually carefully break them up into different modules and make sense of each one individually, you learn how the whole thing works. She still needs to look at Luna's collar later, but it can't be any more complicated than this thing. Plus, there's only so many possible ways a 'key' could be formed.

Much of Luna's meat isn't ready for a non-carnivore to eat as-is yet, but that's nothing a little magic can't fix.

Luna, for her part, is generally around, returning irregularly with rabbits, and deer, and the occasional scary tentacled thing, as she steadily works to stock her smokehouse. Occasionally she knocks down a tree and comes back with a heap of wood.

After a while... A whole day almost, it feels like, she takes a break to improve the smokehouse out of ?guilt?, before telling Luna, "I need to take a close look at the collar and write down the designs on the inside, so I can figure out how to get it off."

"Okay."

Luna crawls up to Wynn, arching her neck to show off the collar. Naturally, all the complicated runework is on the inside, where it's not visible to casual observation... but there are ways around that.

"...Okay, I forgot about that."

She plays with utility magic for a bit until she manages a better peek at the magical workings of the runes, hidden inside the metal somehow, and starts transcribing them out into her handy-dandy grimoire.

"Going as fast as I can here, eff why eye."

Luna tries to relax a bit as she waits, but there's still a definite tension regarding the collar thing she's not thinking about. She's just lying here for no reason while nothing particularly interesting happens. It's fine. Nothing terrible is about to happen.

It's kind of scary, though... thinking about something else; that last confusing statement from Wynn is a good distraction!

"Eff why... what?"

"'For your information'. I speak internet, sorry."

Scribble scribble scribble compare correct scribble... Those steady hands the isekai'ing gave her are coming in handy for this...

That's not any less confusing? Maybe she shouldn't bug the Fox while she's looking at the collar doing something that Luna isn't thinking about, but she badly needs the distraction.

"What is internet?"

"Oh, uh... Talking to people who are far away. By writing or sharing pictures and stuff. It's uh... Hmm..." Writewritewrite. "Had code tutorials and stuff..."

That's a pretty good distraction! There's a connection slowly forming in Luna's mind, with people spending so much time sitting alone doing something boring... with the right trick, they can talk to each other from far away? Neat!

"Oh! People are talking far away? Are they helping?"

"No, no, no internet here. I miss it. I just uhhhhhh..."

Scribblescribble.

"I say a lot of things I learned there. Because they're funny or whatever."

Oh. That wasn't it, then? Or...

"You lost your internet, so you can't talk to far away people?"

Luna peers around at the nearby shelves, wondering where such a mysterious item might have gotten to.

"Yeah, when I got here."

...Sigh.

"When I started dreaming. No computers or phones or internet here."

She pauses briefly and cracks her knuckles before resuming her copying-patterns-down.

Ah, that makes sense!

"Back in your home, when not dreaming?"

Luna pauses for a moment, considering.

"It is okay. Luna and Fox will go back home when dream ends."

"I don't think so. I think we're here for good. But que sera, sera. It's fine."

Is she almost doooooone? She's starting to get more aware of how awkward this is. Whether Luna thinks it is or not.

"This is not a good dream to stay in. It should stop!"

There's a lot of runes to trace out, but Wynn has most of them by now? Then there'll be more work figuring out what the key needs to look like based on the differences, but there does seem to be a reasonable amount of similarity?

"We can make the, uh, dream better in the meantime. Like the meathouse. Almost done tracing these out, then I need to analyze it..."

"Okay. Luna will try."

She holds still while Wynn finishes tracing the runes.

"...Okay. Done."

She steps back and lets out a long breath.

"I need ... probably another day or two. And I might have to leave for a little while to go help someone else. I promised to check on them. I can scry and tell if they're ready, which is kind of like internet but just one person."

"Okay. Luna will wait."

Luna stretches and paces around the room a bit.

"Life is hard, isn't it."

Her heat isn't going away, but she's still determined to mostly ignore it. Runework! More of that!

And then at the evening, scrying the apothecary as promised.

Luna heads out for more hunting after a bit.

The runework continues to be a timesink, but a pattern is beginning to emerge. If Wynn had a month to spend on this, and maybe two more collars to test with, she could probably make a single magic item that would unlock any collar. She'd also need to figure out how to design an adjustable key to interface with the runework correctly and give the right responses... but the general problem seems just barely doable, while the specific problem is increasingly looking less like whether Wynn can make the key at all, and more whether or not she can manage it on her first try.

The same pattern of casting mana out across the world to scry the same semi-familiar location doesn't get much quicker... but the part where Wynn has to identify the right target within town does. And yes, that sure is some red smoke at the apothecary!

Oh, geez.

At least she knows the way now. And she snuck in once before... Just a couple days after that they might still be twitchy, but she can leave a note maybe? 'Come outside the walls to the patch of woods by the potato field tomorrow morning'...?

Either way, she packs her stuff and tries to nap on the bed... Aware that Luna might just literally sleep next to her but it's comfier, whatever. Next time she wakes up she can be off.

Wynn's rest is interrupted by a naked sleepy Luna cuddling up next to her.

Yep, just as expected!

She could just stay here and go back to sleep... But,

"No, that's asking for trouble." Yaaawn. "Luna, I'm going to go help that person I mentioned. I'll be back in a day or two."

That gets Luna's attention. She sits up a little, eyes more intent.

"Can Luna help?"

"-I'm not sure. Um. I took someone away from a plant that was keeping her - kind of like the collar but different - and I promised to take her back there safely, if she wanted, and take care of the plant seeds. When I checked on her she had done the thing that means it's time to come help... I don't know if I need help but I need to sneak in to a town and give her a note, then sneak back out. I'm not actually sure if you're faster than me? You're stronger, and get tired less, I think. But there also might be confusing or dangerous things that way, because there's a lot more people. I don't want to get you hurt... More than I did already." Sigh.