Working out there were two elves was useful but not inherently actionable. It was a question of who the better target was. They’d yet to see either of the elves since the battle, only the results of their actions.
In the end, they decided to hunt the one controlling the plants. The monsters were a problem, but the plants were the ones stripping their defences.
“Okay, but how do we find them?” asked Ratface.
They were settled around a table at the edge of town, not too far from the ‘front’. Different groups of the town on break sat around them exhausted. Tiffany and Claudette kept swapping in and out as they took shifts to keep the plants pushed off.
“We could triangulate it,” Abigail said.
Ratface looked at her in confusion and the older lady looked over to Suncat. Suncat shrugged in equal confusion.
“Can you get a map of the area?” Abigail asked. Suncat shrugged and headed out. She came back with the map and spread it over the table.
“It’s where we measure out a few places to work out where they are,” Abigail explained, “it’s not a perfect system. It assumes the person controlling it isn’t moving around.”
“I wouldn’t be able to do that without moving,” said Tiffany. She collapsed into the chair next to Ratface and Ratface handed her a glass of water which she grateful accepted.
“The worst part about this is it doesn’t even feel like I’m in a siege, just doing gardening,” Tiffany wined.
Ratface could relate. She’d only just woken up and suddenly everyone was at battle stations. It was disorienting enough on its own but doubly so with the way her brain felt. Everything still felt muted. She couldn’t even bring herself to get too panicked about the siege that they were under. She only felt real concern when Halmir had nearly been caught. Whatever had made her feel this way always weakened when he was around.
He was currently on a tour with Albert, the two of them keeping an eye out for other monsters.
“I don’t understand how we can work any of this out,” said Ratface, “What are we going to measure?”
“I forget that you haven’t spent years learning magic theory,” said Abigail.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about either,” said Tiffany.
“Neither” said Suncat.
Abigail looked between the three of them. She looked at them like they didn’t know something basic and Ratface had to wonder just what her schooling had been like. Ratface’s had been a lot more raid focused. Abigail tapped the map.
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“Most magic has a reaction time, it’s just so small at most range as to be functionally instantaneous. A magic this far though should have some lag in reaction time.” She pointed at Ratface.
“Those vines that attacked you were the most aggressive we’ve seen so far. Assuming that it wasn’t a fluke, and they all react that way, we can work out vaguely where they are.”
“Yeah, but how to we work out the distance?”
“The average proficient caster has a lag time of one second per 100 meters,” said Abigail. It was weird seeing her talking theory. In Ratface’s mind she was a clever knight but still a knight. She was beginning to see that she was a rune crafter first and a knight second.
After than they moved Ratface to different parts of the forest under attack. They started far to the right and got Ratface to start cutting. She was at it for ten seconds and was just beginning to think it was a fluke when the vines tried to attack her. Abigail caught them before she could and burned them away.
They repeated this process in several different places with different results. The longest they got was twenty seconds and the shortest ironically ended up being the first place they had tried. With each point of data, Abigail marked more places on the map until she had a rough idea of where the enemy was.
Abigail pointed at a spot in the map that seemed to be where their different lines met. It wasn’t directly across from the middle of the town and Ratface wondered if that was intentional on the plant caster’s part or if they had just chosen an arbitrary point.
“They should be here, assuming they haven’t worked out what we’re doing,” she said.
Ratface was in quiet awe of the old woman. She had though only someone with magic could so accurately scout someone, but Abigail had done it with nothing more than a map and some lines. Sometimes the world seemed so big that Ratface wondered if she’d ever completely understand it.
“So how are we attacking them?” Ratface asked. It was just Abigail and her by the map. At some point the rest of them had realised only those two were needed and gone off to help elsewhere. They’d only occasionally reappeared to tell Abigail about some news before returning to their own fronts.
Abigail looked at Ratface, she seemed to be weighing something.
“You won’t be coming,” said Abigail. She held up her hand before Ratface could argue.
“It’s not because of your condition although that’s a good reason too. It’s how the plants react to you.” Abigail gestured at the map which had the plants progress mapped out as well.
“I had a suspicion, so I got the others to check. Whenever the plants were attacking you, they stopped marching forward in other areas. Whatever is controlling them is after you.”
Ratface frowned, a part of her felt like she was just being told a lie to keep her safe. Abigial could clearly see it on her face, so she knelt down and put her hand on Ratface’s shoulder.
“I need you to stay here and be the focus,” she said, “I don’t like the idea of using you as bait but we need the focus away from the group that pushed into the green. This plan can’t succeed without you grabbing the plants attention.”
Ratface could feel the weight of the request through Abigail’s touch. It was nice to be relied on so much. In her current state, most of her memories involved Abigail so she took a lot of comfort from the older woman’s trust. She put her own hand over Abigail’s.
“Okay, I can be distracting,” she said.
Abigail looked relieved as she pushed herself back up.
“Thank you, but be careful, okay?”
“Sure, I’m always careful,” said Ratface. Abigail gave her a look that told Ratface she didn’t agree. Ratface would argue, but searching her own memories, it looked like Abigail was right.