"Just curiosity, really," Beth said with a shrug. "We saw you down here, and I know you noticed us, so I figured we'd stop and see what was going on."

  "Well, I quite enjoy getting away from time to time and fishing," the woman said with a huge grin. "But, where are my manners? I'm Lori, so nice to meet you."

  The woman gave what looked like a very formal bow to Beth, who said, "I'm Beth, and this is…Sera…"

  She hesitated at the end as Sera had walked up to the woman during their introduction and started to…well, sniff her. Lori gave Beth a look over Sera's shoulder, asking with her eyes what was happening, and Beth had to shrug, holding her hands palm-up while frowning at Sera. The dragon girl ignored them both, giving the woman several more powerful sniffs before staring at her with a questioning look.

  "Can I help you?" Lori asked the dragon, giving her another look.

  "You smell very familiar," Sera said. "Have we met before?"

  "I don't immediately recognize you, little lizard," the woman replied with a grin.

  "I swear, I've smelled you before," Sera said.

  "Okay, weird thing to say to someone," Beth cut in, jerking Sera's tail to pull her away from the very powerful woman.

  "I don't mind," Lori said with a lazy wave of her hand.

  "Hmm, I recognize you, though," Sera said. "That smell…is so familiar."

  "I don't think we've met?" Lori said with a slight frown, showing the edges of fangs.

  "Were you at the Royal Rose last year?" Sera asked with a pondering look.

  "I was. You were there as well?" Lori asked, face brightening.

  "I worked there the past four years," Sera explained. "I must have smelled you there. I remember that scent very distinctly."

  "What a shame. Had I known such a beauty was there, I would definitely have spent some time with you," Lori said, appearing in front of Sera in a blink and caressing her cheek.

  "We could make up for it now?" Sera said, laying a hand over Lori's and settling her other hand on her hip.

  "I would love to," Lori replied. "But, sadly, I have rather limited free time, and I want to spend the little bit I have left fishing. I must return to work before this evening."

  "Oh, no quickie, even?" Sera asked, noting that Lori hadn't let her go even with her denial.

  "Give me your number, little beauty, and I'll call you later," Lori said in a deep voice, leaning forward to give Sera a quick, sensual kiss.

  "Making a pass at someone's girlfriend right in front of them," Beth interjected with a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head.

  "Oh my, I'm so sorry!" Lori said, letting go of Sera to immediately turn and start touching Beth. "You're obviously included in the invitation as well."

  Beth registered the communicator contact request at the same time as she was being caressed, chuckling and accepting as she said, "I guess I'm still getting used to the people around me being very open about romance. I was hoping to break it up, but not like that."

  "Ah, you're someone from a more monogamous culture, I see," Lori said. "I apologize if I caused any offense."

  "Not at all," Beth replied with a grin, leaning up on her tiptoes to give Lori a quick kiss. "I just had to remind you both I was here."

  "As if I could forget," Sera grumbled, sliding behind Beth and wrapping her arms around her while Lori continued to caress her for a moment.

  "You know, I could get used to this," Beth said with a small chuckle.

  "You've found a needy one, have you?" Lori asked, caressing Beth's face for a moment longer before letting her go and moving back to her stool. "I'll contact you beauties some time, possibly even quite soon."

  "Anything interesting you've seen up here? Since we're about to explore the area," Beth asked, pulling Sera with her so the dragon girl kept hugging and caressing her while she stepped over to stand next to Lori.

  "Sorry, I haven’t really paid much attention," Lori said, flicking a finger at Beth to send her a small data packet. "I've sent you what little I had, but I wasn't observing carefully."

  "Thanks a lot; even this is way more than we had. It's a great start," Beth said as her eyes went distant for a moment, reading over the packet on her communicator.

  "Just be careful of the lakes, little beauties," Lori said, a massive fin appearing in the middle of the few miles wide lake as if to emphasize the point. "There's some nastiness down there that you should be at my level or beyond to deal with."

  "I take it you're an Ascended?" Beth asked casually as she finished scanning the data, mainly about some of the beasts in the area.

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  "Yes, just recently," Lori answered. "That's why it's so nice to get away and just relax a bit, you know?"

  "Wrong person to ask," said Sera. "This girl will fight for months at a time while barely taking a nap. Getting away and relaxing isn't part of her vocabulary."

  "Ah, I see types like that sometimes," Lori said. "Just be careful, if you burn very brightly, you burn out very quickly."

  "That's not a problem," Beth said, elbowing Sera. "And, I do take breaks, like when I went to the Royal Rose."

  "You took two weeks off after years of continuous fighting and call that a break?" Sera asked in mock outrage, Beth lightly elbowing her again.

  "You two are cute," Lori said.

  "Why does everyone always say that?" Beth grumbled, turning her head as Sera tried to kiss her.

  "Because it's true," Lori replied idly. "Would the two of you like some fresh fish?"

  "I don't really go in for that raw meat stuff," Beth said with a shake of her head.

  "You've never had it done right," Lori replied firmly. "Here, take some of what I've prepared. Oh, you don't have an item or power that freezes the contents, do you?"

  "No, our storages are normal, temperature-wise," Beth replied with a raised eyebrow.

  "Here," Lori said, leaning over after casting her rod. She touched Sera's hand, and then Sera guided Lori's hand to Beth's necklace, and Beth detected items being pushed towards the necklace, allowing them to enter. "That should keep you two happy for a while."

  "If you have more, I'll buy them from you," Beth said. "Sera has an eating skill, so we could always use more food."

  "Don't worry about it," Lori laughed, pushing several tons more cut and fileted fish meat into Beth's necklace, filling a chunk of it.

  "Thanks a lot, Lori," Beth said, leaning forward to give her a quick hug and getting a not-so-quick kiss for her troubles.

  "Are you two done yet?" Blood suddenly asked from beside them, having dropped down from the ship after putting it in hover.

  "Oh my, three little beauties," Lori said, tugging at her fishing rod for a moment. "You don't have yet more hidden up there, do you?"

  "Sadly not," Sera laughed in response.

  "Well, three is already quite plenty," Lori said with a sly grin. "No reason to be too greedy."

  "Nice to meet you," Blood growled reluctantly, pulling Beth and Sera away from the tall woman and touching her hand to exchange contact information.

  "Standoffish," Lori muttered, "but beautiful."

  "Thanks. I think," Blood said, looking over as Lori hooked something else in the lake. Seemingly not interested in the exciting battle for the fish, she called the ship down and hopped on board. Beth and Sera watched Lori reel in another massive fish, dozens of feet long and covered in scales as wide as Sera’s torso, before un-hooking it and tossing it back.

  "We'll leave you to it," Beth said, getting a wave from Lori.

  "Don't be strangers, little beauties," Lori said from her seat as the two hopped in the cargo hold and Blood lifted off.

  "Didn't like her?" Beth asked when they returned to the bridge.

  "She smelled funny," was Blood's only comment.

  "I liked it," Sera said, continuing at Beth's raised eyebrow, "She smelled quite nice."

  "Hmm, she tasted nice," Beth said with a shrug, remembering kissing the woman.

  "Strange, though, I didn't hear about an Ascended being here," Sera said.

  "Would you have?" Beth asked.

  "I check that stuff usually," Sera explained. "An Ascended being in an area is pretty big. It's only less noticeable on Core Worlds and in such high-end areas. I wonder what she's doing out here?"

  "Fishing?" Beth replied with a slightly arched brow.

  "Well, obviously," Sera replied.

  Blood had resumed their flight and was back to scanning the area while Sera and Beth chatted, making notes and plotting a good course. The ship wasn't moving at max speed, but they were covering ground at a very good clip. The lakes were pretty hard to survey from the air, the combination of dense mana and water making them a real chore to pierce. The airships current equipment was good, especially after Beth had used the orb to upgrade it, but it certainly wasn't top-of-the-line. Beth would have to use some of her oh-so-copious free time to do some research into airships and ship equipment. She was betting upgrades, especially to a high-end ship like theirs, was going to cost an absolute arm and a leg.

  Beth retreated to her books and Sera to napping as they kept going. The surveying was going to take quite a while, as they had a very large area to cover and a limited range on their scanners. They also couldn't fly around at lightspeeds, so their progress was rather limited by airspeed as well. Blood didn't complain or say anything as she manned the con for hours at a time, clearly in her element as she enjoyed piloting the ship around. She seemed to be a natural at it, taking to steering and maneuvering a ship like a duck to water.

  "We should see if there are any piloting classes," Beth commented.

  "You don't think I’m a good pilot?" Blood asked with a slight whine to her voice.

  "I think you're a great pilot…for an amateur. I'd be a lot more comfortable if you were licensed," Beth replied.

  "Wait, she's not licensed?" Sera asked, looking between the two.

  "No, she just started piloting and seemed good at it, so she flies the ship," Beth replied with a shrug.

  "Yeah, that's not gonna fly, pardon the pun," Sera said. "If you want to fly anything bigger than a milk crate anywhere outside of a frontier world, you need to be licensed or you'll get in a shit ton of trouble. You also need to be licensed to fly bigger craft like starships or, again, you'll get in a massive shit ton of trouble."

  "Okay, glad we're finding out before getting the fine," Beth said with a sigh.

  "The CRA has classes," Sera said to the moping wolf. "You can keep flying on this world, but you should go sign up for classes when we're back. Actually, scratch that, we should focus on hammering out the Trial for Laselle and then get you in classes. There's usually a waiting list for pilot classes and some of them take months to work through; you're not getting a license tomorrow."

  "I say we do the opposite; take as long as possible here," Blood grumbled.

  "Blood, if you get fully licensed, you can fly whatever you want, whenever you want," Beth explained with another sigh.

  "Fine, fine. I'll sign up for classes when we're done," Blood muttered with a sigh.

  They went back to their tasks, or pastimes, for the next few hours, nearly a full day passing before they were done scanning the lakes. That wasn't everything, of course, as they hadn't fully scanned the forest that was between the grasslands and the lakes, so they had another day of work on that. Beth and Sera retired to the bedroom at some point, leaving Blood to pilot the ship while they had a bit, or more than a bit, of fun before resting for a while. They returned to the bridge, rested, washed, and fed, Beth bringing Blood some hot food that she ate without looking at while flying.

  Two days or so of scanning had gotten everything surveyed to a reasonable initial level; now it was time for them to get hands-on and investigate some of the anomalies themselves. They had an initial list from the surveying that they wanted to look into, and they were likely to discover more as they moved about. This was the more important part, as overhead scans were nice, but it was the on-the-ground investigation that gave the CRA, and sometimes other organizations, the detailed data on what was happening that let them plan and move as they needed.

  "First stop," Blood said, much improved in mood after a few hours of flying without interruptions.

  "Set it down, I'll pack it up," Beth said, looking through the camera feeds at the area.

  They were above an area of very dense forest that was centered around a canyon, a deep cleft in the forest floor that seemed to drink in the light. They had gotten very high readings of mana from the chasm, including very high levels of fire-aspected mana, something that shouldn't be occurring in a forest or so close to the planet's surface apart from in an active volcano. That meant there was something down there causing a huge buildup of fire mana, something that they at least wanted to get their eyes on before making any conclusions about.

  "It's fucking hot," Beth muttered once they had landed and she was packing up the ship.

  "Flame mana," Sera commented. "It's gonna dry it out and heat it up."

  "I'd rather the cold," Beth said with a slight sigh.

  "I understand that," Blood muttered, scratching at her fur a little. She had been spending a lot of time thinking and a lot of time 'sleeping' when she wasn’t piloting the airship, and that had been time focused on her humanization. She had likely been making strides forward with it, but Beth wasn't really sure as Blood maintained the same look as always, not allowing her features to change to anything more human.

  "Shall we?" Sera asked from the edge of the cleft in the ground, gesturing to the other two.

  "Do you like the heat?" Beth asked as she walked to the edge and looked down.

  "I basically absorb extra heat in the surrounding atmosphere into my body, so it feels good for me," Sera answered, peering down at the rocks below.

  "Hmm," Beth said, looking at their path of descent. The chasm was deep but broken up by different outcrops and juts of stone and rock, meaning there was certainly not going to be any jumping straight to the bottom in one go.

  "Blood?" Beth asked after examining the descent.

  "Don't get too far behind," the wolf grumbled before lightly hopping over the edge, starting their descent into the broiling darkness.