"You knew that wasn't just a statue? --I'm not asking you to say anymore about what it is instead than we've all already witnessed, but, I can't ask the griffin what you were aware of."

"Yes, I knew. I have been using this library for some time, now; I had only to brush a finger against it to realize that there was more to it than carved stone." 

"Huh. Wow. Well, lots of weird stuff is happening lately! I'd rather deal with a spontaneously depetrifying griffin than Deskari playing stone put with the Wardstone." 

"Amen."

Lusilla turns back into starfish shape, and successfully stashes the books somewhere marginally safer like she had originally intended to do. And then they escort the Storyteller back to the Defender's Heart. Well, Lusilla carries him, as she had earlier suggested. 

...They run into less trouble with cultists and marauders deciding to fight them, while Lusilla is parading around in her true form. She's--not sure that's a good thing. Like, yes, avoiding fights is sensible, and not having to kill people is always good, but on the other hand if anyone smart is paying attention she's kind of broadcasting their location like a beacon. 

Lusilla brings a bundle of looted weapons over to Joran Vhane, and tells Anevia where she stashed the barrel of alchemist's fire the cultists left behind in the library and she put somewhere where if it spilled it would get on stone structures and not wood ones, and then she goes to stash a handful of other things in the corner where her stuff is stashed. 

...

Her stuff is moving. 

Not a lot, but enough to indicate a living creature moving inside it--is that a rat? She grabs some stuff and pulls it aside to get a better look. 

It is not a rat! It is a dragon!

"--Well hello there little fellow," she murmurs. She cannot, actually, immediately identify this little guy as a member of the same class of being as Terendelev--she didn't know anything about the Worldwound a few days ago, let alone what Tien dragons look like--but that is clearly not a rat or anything else she's ever seen. 

"Hello!"

You can talk! she does not say, because in her natural form the fact that she can talk is sometimes surprising, and she doesn't know enough about what this little guy is to know if them talking is weird. 

But she thinks it. If anyone wants to read her mind it's their own fault if they find things that aren't maximally considerate. 

"What are you doing here?"

"I heard about the Worldwound, and about the great army of Lung Wa that was sent to save the world, and I wanted to help." 

"The great army of Lung Wa? I'm sorry, but I'm from a very small village--I hadn't even heard of the Worldwound a week ago."

The tiny dragon nods with a performed sagacity they have not had the years to truly earn. "Lung Wa was the great empire of Tian Xia. It had troubles, with the end of prophecy, as all places did, but nobody wants the world to end--so Lung Wa sent a great army, twenty thousand brave soldiers and eighty thousand splendid terracotta warriors, and they kept the world from being overrun by demons. 

Eight hundred heroes brought six thousand terracotta warriors home to fail to save the Empire from civil war." 

"I'm sorry to hear that. I--they must have all gone somewhere very good, afterwards." 

Nod nod. "But I want to help." 

"That's very brave of you. What's your name? I'm Lucy." 

"Altan." 

"What have you got there around your neck?"

Lusilla attempts to look down, even though looking down at your own neck is awkward at best and she already knows what Anevia's talking about. "His name is Altan!" 

"Hello!"

...Sure, this might as well happen. 

"You're picking up friends at quite a clip." 

"...I'm a pretty friendly person? And we need all the help we can get."

"You're not wrong. But take it from someone who used to do the adventuring thing full-time: at some point, a group gets unwieldy enough that adding more people doesn't help so much. Obviously it depends on the situation, but sneaking through the streets of Kenabres trying to avoid too much demon attention..." 

Shrug. "I'll keep that in mind. But we can split up, go out as two groups or some of us stay behind to help protect this place--I don't think bringing more people onboard is a bad thing."

"It probably isn't. But I thought I ought to warn you anyway."