And it's not like it should be humanly impossible to follow anyway. (Though they were hoping she'd run headlong into a tree at least once.)

Eventually she comes upon a small crowd of goblins watching two large ones beat each other up. Apparently this is a thing that happens. The larger combatant is her prophesied opponent, so chances are he's going to win. From the shouts, he's also a relative newcomer.

Oh that's interesting. She folds her arms and watches, smirking.

Those two are concentrating on each other, but their audience thinks she's interesting. In several different senses, all of them unsavory.

Eventually the larger goblin gets the smaller in a stranglehold, and the loser struggles long enough to raise doubts about whether goblins need to breathe before conceding. It morphs into a familiar-looking club, which the winner brandishes. At Sadde.

She giggles. "That was marvelous! You must be quite powerful." Her smile turns wicked. "But I'm more."

The small goblin she followed spreads the word that it's a challenge. The leader grins wickedly, and when he does it his mouth cracks wide and reveals more teeth. "Sounds like what you're saying is I get to grind you into the dust. Or even tell my new minions to do it."

"Too chicken to face me yourself, huh?"

He charges, howling about what unappetizing things he's going to do to Sadde once he wins. Even the goblins who bet against him earlier are on his side this time.

The charge is slowed by the fact that he literally just came from a fight, and he's not used to this weapon yet. Still dangerous.

"Not now," she says, rolling her eyes and dodging. "Don't you know anything? In two days, at the clearing with the circle of rocks that way." She points. "Bring however many minions you want, but I fight you first."

He grabs at her. It's not a very solid grip, but unpleasantly slimy. "Why would I let you go?"

"You don't have a choice. I'm not getting captured now, and you're going to appear there in two days. Morning. You've just fought and won, you're weak and you want to secure your power." She slips away from his grasp and kicks him, simultaneously skipping away in a direction she can bolt from if needed. "I'll see you on the battlefield."

"I'm not weak. But I'll be stronger. Enjoy your last two days in one piece."

She salutes with the non-disgusting hand and leaves, at a jog.

They don't pursue.

When she's far enough away she changes her face again and then finds somewhere to wash off the slime and it's still not enough so she gets to Johannes' demesne and: "I need a shower please tell me you have one."

"Yes, of course. You visited the goblins, then?"

He starts walking toward his tower, then catches on about the urgency and the space shifts around them and deposits them in front of a bathroom door.

"I did," she tells the walls, and gratefully starts having a very thorough shower. "He'll be there in two days. I just need to make sure I have everything set up then."

"It is fairly stacked in your favor already. Much more so than beating the charybdis was."

"Yeah. And I got myself a book on glamour and illusions, too, I'll probably read some of that over the next couple of days," she says, rinsing her illusion off herself. "And compose a letter to my father to explain why I'm running away from home. By the way I'm running away from home, I'm quite over living under his roof after spending six months as a practitioner in the forties."

"Good choice. Are you running away to anywhere, or just anywhere that isn't here?"

"I was thinking Toronto."

"I'm not very familiar with what practitioner society looks like there. The Lord of the city is an Incarnation of conquest, so you might want to avoid getting on his bad side."

She nods. "Is there anything in particular I should do because he's an Incarnation of conquest specifically?"

"I couldn't say. Make sure not to give him any reason to think something of yours belongs to him, because he will take it, and try not to make anything sound like a competition. Even that is mostly guesswork."

"—I do have to give him some form of gift, when I get there. That sounds like it might be, ah, thorny. With an Incarnation of conquest."

"Oh, that's fine. Then you aren't expecting to get it back anyway. And it is normal etiquette, so he won't want to subvert it very much any more than you would."