Nalia thought about that order. She needed to make contact in a way that wouldn’t alarm them too badly, so after a bit of thought she decided on her plan. The fairy plucked one of the leaves of the tree they were standing on and cast a small spell to temporarily turn it into paper, and then she wrote a short message on it using the same magic before casting another spell to create a controlled gust of wind that blew the paper through the air, rising up in a gentle curve before dropping down straight into the hands of one of the bear beastkin.

The resistance group had noticed the paper moving, but Nalia’s plan had worked and they hadn’t perceived it as a threat, so the bear who caught it simply read it naturally after noticing that there were words written on it.

“Wait.” He told the others “This paper says ‘I am also opposed to the Inishie and would like to cooperate, may I show myself?’”

The entire group tensed up at that, and there were many looks all around as they tried to figure out where the person who sent the message was (they had only noticed the paper by the time it was dropping down, so they didn’t know where it had come from), but the apparent boss of the wolves (a man with dark gray fur) quickly got them to calm down and keep silent while he and the bears discussed the situation.

That discussion lasted only a few short exchanges, as they quickly decided that even if the offer was a trap, allowing whoever it was to appear wouldn’t make their situation any worse, so the bear raised his voice to reply positively to that question.

“Let’s go.” Nalia said, and Nina jumped down from the tree as the fairy stopped using her concealment spells. She also sent another message to Elise, asking whether she had any other orders now that contact had been made.

Their sudden appearance startled the beastkin a bit, even with advance warning. It would have been even worse if they had been watching from anywhere closer.

“That’s the Black Armor!” One of the wolfkin said unnecessarily.

“Indeed. And I am Nalia, the fairy who controls it.” She said after casting a spell to project her voice outside “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t show myself. I’m trying to avoid leaving behind my smell.”

At the same time, Elise’s reply to Nalia’s previous query arrived:

‘Offer to share information about the movements of the Strangers and see if you can act as a contact point for planning a joint operation. I’m gonna call Amara for this.’

Nalia nodded inwardly as the wolfkin boss spoke “I am called Fevora. Considering the current situation, may I assume that you are the only one here, while your contractor is somewhere else?”

“Yes, that is the case. She is currently staying at an alliance base away from the frontline. We are still in contact, however.” Nalia replied, casually revealing something important.

“You can actually keep contact with your contractor from such a distance? That’s... Unusual. Ah, I am called Nerisha, by the way.” The bearkin woman spoke out in surprise.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who would deny the fact that my contractor is a very unusual girl.” Nalia spoke in a half-joking tone “But now is not the time to talk about that.”

“Then we should get to business, right?” Fevora spoke again.

“Right. I was sent into enemy lines in order to try and gather information about what our enemies are trying to do, so I decided to follow the group of wolfkin who started moving strangely.” Nalia spoke “I managed to spy on this meeting and discover your group, plus from what I heard… I believe you guys would be amenable to an information exchange.”

“What kind of information exchange?” Fevora asked.

“You see, since you guys have connections to the alliance, then you should be aware that I was the one who created the Stranger, or rather, Inishie detection spell. But what you might not be aware is that the spell given to our allies is a simplified version, since non-fairies would find it almost impossible to actually use the original.”

“So you’re saying that your own spell has a larger range?” Nerisha asked.

“Exactly. While it may not be enough to cover the entire forest even from the center of it, my range still covers a large portion of it.” Nalia explained “And I’ve been running this spell more or less nonstop ever since I created it. I even began to use magic to keep it working and gathering information even while I’m asleep, though that happened more recently.”

“Does that mean you have detailed information on the movements of the Inishie in the north of the forest?” Nerisha asked, almost unable to contain her excitement.

“That’s right. I knew you guys would be interested in such a thing because of what I heard.”

“You mentioned an exchange of information before.” Fevora spoke again “This is what you’re prepared to offer, but what kind of information do you want in return?”

“Anything and everything you have found out regarding the enemies’ movements and intentions. We have a fairly disturbing theory about what the Inishie may be planning, and the more information we can get, the easier it will be to figure it out and stop it.” Nalia answered.

At that point, Elise sent her a message saying that Amara was right next to her and ready to communicate with the resistance, so Nalia sent a reply telling her how things were currently going.

“I can also act as an intermediate to allow you to communicate directly with one of the higher-ups of the alliance.” Nalia said, and then received another message from Elise.

‘Amara recognized Nerisha from the name and description, and asked you to say a few words to her.’

Nalia listened to those words while the resistance members were discussing what to do among themselves, then she spoke again:

“Nerisha.” She grabbed the woman’s attention before continuing “Our contact asked me to pass down some words to you: ‘For the two hundred and thirty seven years of earth and wood.’”

“What the name of your contact?” Nerisha replied, immediately serious.

“Amara.”

Nerisha relaxed “That’s good. She’s trustworthy.” She declared.

“So you think we should accept that deal?” Nerisha’s fellow bear asked.

“Yes.” Came the simple response.

“If that’s the case, then we will also support that idea.” Fevora said, and his fellow wolves nodded in agreement.

“Then I guess it’s settled.” The other bear said before looking at the armor “We’ll cooperate with you, but we’ll need to discuss what is the best way for us to do it.”

“It’s necessary to discuss that, but me and mine won’t be able to take part in that discussion right now.” Fevora said “We’ve already been away from our posts for too long, even with our preparations, so we have to go back to avoid arousing suspicion.” He bowed deeply to the bearkin “We shall trust in your judgment and follow your decisions. You can send another message to us when a decision is made.”

“Understood. We shall endeavor to prove worthy of that trust.”

With that said the group of wolfkin went back the way they came, leaving the two bears alone with Nalia (and Nina as well, though they weren’t aware of that part). Nerisha told her to come closer and Nina walked towards the duo. Then the other bear introduced himself as Himoko, having realized that their new ally wasn’t aware of his name.

“Nice to meet you.” Nalia spoke in her normal voice, since she was now close enough to not need sound amplification.

“Nice to meet you too, mage Nalia.” Himoko replied “This place is relatively safe, but we should go to one of our hidden caves, just to be sure.”

“Lead the way, then.” Nalia replied. She also took the time to send another message to Elise, as she had been doing regularly throughout that conversation, keeping her apprised.

“Nerisha?” He asked her, and the woman nodded and took out a small tool from her clothes which she then used to draw on the ground, leaving thick black lines.

“We’ve been using magical passages to move around the forest without being detected.” Himoko explained “The number of places we can go to using this is limited, but it’s still quite handy.”

“I can imagine.” Nalia replied “My birthplace also has magical passages, but because of the way the flow of energy works we have so few possible destination points that we basically don’t bother using them.” She made conversation while they waited for Nerisha to draw the complicated design needed for their purposes.

Magical passages were essentially natural pathways that form in areas that are rich in magic, though actually using said pathways required a certain level of magic power and understanding of the way the magical energy flowed around that particular area, so they weren’t used very often, generally.

Nalia herself wasn’t an expert in those types of magical workings (yet), so even if she decided to fully focus on studying the magical passages of Theremis, it would likely take weeks before she was able to make any sort of reliable use of them, which was why that was never brought up as an option for infiltrating.

Regardless, Himoko decided to continue the conversation by asking her a question:

“About the way you can communicate with your contractor from such a long distance… I know Nerisha called it unusual, but it would be more accurate to say it’s unheard of. How exactly are you able to do it?” His tone sounded genuinely curious.

Elise had talked to Nalia about that before, so the fairy could easily answer that question.

“Rather than why we can do it, a better question would be why the contractors of this continent can’t.” She said “And the answer is that there just hasn’t been enough research done in that direction. Most of the contractors who are born here don’t take sentient beings as partners, so they have to reason to develop ways of doing such a thing.” Nalia explained “Some do, but not enough of them for techniques like that to be developed to any great extent. And while they are known in other continents, it isn’t exactly widespread knowledge, so finding out about it is difficult.

“My contractor wasn’t born in this continent, and she happened to have access to the needed knowledge of such techniques, so we just had to practice.” She concluded.

The fairy also knew that Elise’s wide pool of knowledge came from her extremely long-lived older sisters, some of whom even had first-hand information, having interacted with very skilled contractors who were now long dead. She didn’t have any reason to go into it, though.

“I see. That makes sense. It isn’t like there’s some sort of unified contractor association that could pool their talents together to develop those sorts of skills, so their techniques are mostly self-taught or passed down between master and disciple. Under those conditions, I bet that even techniques that would be more useful for our regular contractors aren’t all that developed in comparison to what can be done.” Himoko said.

“You would be correct in that assessment.” Nalia replied.

Any further conversation was interrupted when Nerisha finished her drawing (it was a strange design that reminded one of the root system of a tree) and called for them to come.

Nina and Himoko walked up to her, the bearkin naturally taking a position on top of one of the corners of the design while Nerisha pointed at another one, which Nina walked onto. Then the bear woman moved onto her own designated point and poked another part of the design with her foot, channeling magic power and opening the passage.

The passage wasn’t anything visible, but simply a gap formed in the flow of magic, and as the three figures were sucked into what an observer would describe as nothingness, Nalia thought to herself that it was convenient that this sort of travel didn’t require as much precision as teleportation, since otherwise having an entire extra person that the caster didn’t know about could result in the spell failing, thus revealing Nina’s existence.

As it was, both of Elise’s partners briefly felt something akin to being dragged by a river’s current, and then the party was inside a cave lit up by what looked like floating orbs of light.

After taking a moment to get her bearings and adjust the spells she had running, Nalia decided to get right into business:

“Since this could be important for figuring everything out, I’ll hand you guys the information first.”

The two bearkin nodded and Himoko stepped forward, saying “I’ll take it. I’m better at doing data analysis.”

Nina nodded to show that Nalia agreed with that. The fairy then began focusing her magic again, doing something similar to when she had provided Amara with the simplified version of the detection spell, but instead of imbuing a magical package with a spell formula, she was imbuing it with raw data that had been collected by her magic.

The process was simpler than recording a spell formula, but there was much more information that had to be imbued, so it ended up taking about as much time as that previous operation. Nalia handed the package to Himoko, who took it in and started analyzing the data contained within.

Since that wouldn’t be an instant process, Nerisha decided to start giving Nalia (and Amara through her) the most up-to-date information about the enemy’s movements. She began by reciting things like what the traitor beastkin were being asked to setup as well as the resources used, before talking about the forces that they had access to and the areas they could most easily interfere with, though she didn’t go into many details (like the exact numbers and locations of the resistance members) for reasons of security.

Amara replied by talking about the positions of their own forces, plus their most likely paths of action for any possible joint operations and other things of that nature. Then came a discussion about what sort of ritual the Inishie were trying to perform, with Nerisha being appropriately shaken at the theory Elise had proposed. The new information on the ritual preparations also opened up new avenues of deduction, in which Nalia also gave her own opinions regarding the magical aspect.

Himoko still wasn’t done by the time they were finished with all of that, so the bear woman asked Nalia to elaborate on the exact difference between her original spell and the simplified version, leading into a very technical discussion about nature affinity, magical perception and personal spell structuring.

They were about to have to think of yet another topic to discuss when a cry of “I got it!” came from Himoko.

The two eagerly walked up to him (well, Nina was the one actually walking, but details) and asked about the result.

“It’s clear now. We had narrowed down the options for the focus point of the ritual down to three locations, but the movements of the Inishie during this last week, specially the previous two days, make it clear: The place we’re looking for is Calling Point 15, near the two kilometer mark of the Antara river. That’s where we will find our answers.” He replied excitedly.

Nalia immediately reported it back to Elise before saying “Then that’s our target.”

They would need to plan an operation targeting that place, but now they had a clear path forward.