"Well, I was hoping Aleesa was just having a fit of teenaged rebelliousness, but it looks like we aren't so lucky," Noell sighs.  "Let's find the others quickly and report what we saw... I fear the worst for her now."  She nods back towards town.  "Maybe they're still at the candy shop?"

Hayeth:

Hayeth looks up as though realising something then looks towards the waffles

"Why don't we..."

She proceeds to roll it into a cone shape then looks to the owner

"If you put a ball of the dairy frost on the end of this we can then eat it on the move and easily dispose of the vessel afterwards by eating it"

She smiles, very proud of herself 

"That's brilliant!", the proprietor says, "I'll let you both go without paying if you don't mind me putting that as a regular feature."

Hayeth nods and smiles

"That's fine by me! Perhaps based on how popular it is you keep me in mind though eh?"

She then turns to Dumasz while helping the proprietor with the creation of more cones for both of their dairy frost

"I think we should make fairly quick tracks after we have these, I'm not sure our elven friend will be too happy with us if he finds out, but it's too good an opportunity to pass up"

“Potentially.....” Vahorn replies to Lia, keeping his eyes to the ground, on the tracks. “Hopefully not though, snakes could easily take a mere child or priest, but old Joe.... there’s more to this.” He picks up a piece of grass, sniffing it in contemplation. “Candy shop it is.... I guess.”

Dumasz lumbers out of the Candy Shop with his dairy frost cone as happy as he can be, humming to himself at a timbre akin to a rolling thunder storm. 

“You’re right, of course Hayeth. Time to beat feet. Let’s go meet the others and head to the Falls.”

 Hayeth quickly follows after with only her dairy frost cone and jogs a little to catch up with Dumasz and quite excitedly starts talking

"I didn't know you knew magic, you look a little..." She pauses and looks at her own scrawny arms "... big? To be like me. Is music your focus or something like that I noticed you sung to bring that can into life earlier?"

Without skipping a beat she lets out a small whistle and Fay flies to her shoulder from the roof of the sweet shop.

"Fay please find our companions, hopefully from the sky you wont have too much trouble"

The raven then flies up and begins circling above Hayeth and Dumasz looking for the other group

Dumasz laughs. “I do a lot of things, and to be fair: most of it comes pretty easy to me. I could’ve just gotten by without any practice, but I want to become great. I need to be good at everything.”

Dumasz seems on a rambling roll now that you’ve got him started. He’s clearly repeating things he’s been told, but he’s excited about it. He starts to shuffle and stomp his feet in a pattern as he talks to emphasize his words.

”And I love the songs of my people! They aren’t the frivolous things of other people. They’re packed with need and with faith and righteousness. There’s power in those things. Many dragonborn know the chants and dances that connect one’s blood to a battle, but few know that it can also be a conduit to other people. It is the place of great leaders to be fluent in seeing and fueling these conduits.”

"I mean, it seems to me that this is the likely explanation," Lia says with a shrug. "If they were alone and three or four of these snakes ganged up on them, even an experienced hunter might not stand a chance. Let's hope they were dragged back to some sort of lair and not just eaten."

"If the others aren't still at the candy shop, we can check the tavern." She starts back in the direction of town, letting Vahorn pass her and take the lead if he wants. As they walk, she keeps an eye on their surroundings for any snakes or other creatures waiting to jump out at them.

Perception: 18

”Tavern or sweet shop, neither is favourable.” He looks awkwardly at Lia as neither will allow the other to go first, his eyes darting between her and the ground. “I have observed, that in their natural habitat, people will approach the person in the front for..... how do you call it? Smalltalk? It is not a skill that I am comfortable with, or have any intention of learning. Please, one of you take the lead.”

Noell strides past the two, rolling her eyes a bit at the excessive good manners.  “We don‘t have time to play the ‘No, you‘ game right now, guys.  Unless these were magically summoned creatures under some kind of mind control, snakes only attack to eat things.  And while someone potentially raising a lair of underfed snakes right outside our town is a major problem on its own, I, for one, don‘t want to be the person to tell the burgomaster that his daughter is snakefood.“ She takes the lead easily, gesturing for the other two to follow as she hurries back towards the town.

Hayeth is fascinated by what Dumasz is saying she takes in every word as though trying to memorize it, her hand twitches over the quill at her side as though itching to write this down but knowing it is not the time

"That is fascinating, I've not met someone who uses magic from within, I myself learned through study and practice for years"

She begins to ramble alongside Dumasz about her magic tutelage getting quite excited about her theorys on the nature of magic and how it can be changed to suit the users needs

Fay communicates to Hayeth that the others are returning from the forest, generally moving towards the tavern.

You all meet up again near the tavern. It's getting to mid-afternoon.

Lia shrugs to Vahorn as soon as Noell has passed them, then takes up a position behind her and follows back into town.

"Hey!" She calls out to Hayeth and Dumasz once they're in sight, raising a hand in greeting. "We killed some snakes,"  she continues once they're a bit closer, pointing over her shoulder to the creatures Vahorn is carrying. "Anything interesting on your end?"

Hayeth waves and calls back as Fay lands on her shoulder from above

"Hey! The sweet shop was a bit of a dead end but we found out some areas we can check for Aleesa's friends"

She pauses for a second as though thinking back through what Lia said

"Wait snakes?! That's not good right?"

Vahorn nods awkwardly, his mouth stretched out as wide as he can to show as many of his teeth as possible, as these townfolk found polite. “They are not native to the woods, but they are more nutritious than sweets.” He shrugs as he licks his lips, looking over the snakes.  “ Whatever took the girl must have also introduced these snakes to the woods, so now we have some sense of urgency. Their breeding patterns can’t be predicted yet, and they could multiply all over the forest. We should follow the tracks we found as long as we can, and then set up a camp and cook these beauties. Anyone who sees a snake like this...... it’s open season.”

Pointing at Lia, he grunts. “This one killed one with her bare hands. She is as fierce as any predator out there, the rest of you, follow Noell’s and my every word. We will not lose time rescuing you if you do something silly.”

Dumasz scratches his scales under his chin. “Huh. You know, the shop owner said kids have been talking about a snake that ate a cow. I thought it was just kids being imaginative when he said it.”

“Many snakes can dislocate their jaws, enough for a cow would be a stretch for most but I don’t know these ones.” He plays with the snakes jaw, checking if it would have the capacity to open that wide. “If these snakes have larger relatives, we may be in trouble.”

Hayeth thinks a moment then looks up

"Well we still have plenty of sun in the sky, shall we head for this hole? I'm not too knowledgable about nature but just through logic a large hole in hill seems like a good lair for a large snake?"

Without waiting for a reply she pulls out a scrap of leather from a pouch at her side and begins muttering in tongues holding it in one hand, she then blows over it towards the skin on her other arm which then briefly gains a subtle pearlescent hue, swiftly turning back to normal, as she casts Mage Armor