Soul Merger

Kotori peered down at the device Fili had handed her. The slime girl had slapped together something that looked like a compass merged with a dowsing rod. It might be nice to weave into a nest, but she had a hard time thinking it'd be useful. "So why do I have to use this thing? You're the one who knows how it works."

"Because magic levels on the ground are affected by local terrain and practitioners." Fili tapped the device causing the wooden needle to swing. "If I hadn't designed the thing to specifically ignore us, it'd be pointing at me. And then probably either you or Alissa. I can't sit down and work out every little magical anomaly from the area. So we need to take the readings in the air."

Kotori looked over the thing again. Well it apparently would have respected her so that's kinda good. Still she didn't like the idea of popping up and down in the city all the time. "Are people going to be okay with a harpy flying around though?"

"They'll be annoyed but you're obviously a 'tamed' harpy so they won't do anything," Alissa replied.

"How is that obvious?" Kotori asked, her feathers ruffling. She didn't like the idea of being kept to begin with.

Clara's hand smoothed down her wings. "You're wearing clothes. Harpies have to be talked into that normally."

"Oh yeah. They are a little annoying," Kotori shook off the irritation. "Well I suppose they've got some use then. So how far do I need to fly up?"

"Try to get about ten feet above the buildings. About the height of a labyrinth ceiling," Fili said. "You'll have to hover or circle a bit for the compass to get the best bearing, then come down and we'll move to a new point."

Kotori sighed, but in the end she supposed this was something important. Apparently slimes were just the start of things. After that would come something called scamps and kids would start getting hurt. And then they'd have to run around and do this anyway so she could eat the brain of whoever caused this mess.

Which now that she thought about it wasn't that bad. But people would probably complain. And they had been nice enough to give her some dragon brain so she did kinda owe them.

"Okay, is there any way to know when we're close?" Kotori asked. "I don't want you to walk past it then have us going in circles for a while."

Fili considered that for a moment. "I assumed we were going to eventually move past it and have to use triangulation. Since the source is probably in a building. But if the device starts spinning all the way around that means we're in the right area."

Ah that's right. Triangulation was one of those tricks humans used to find hidden things. Raiel had mentioned it once. The thought made her chest sink, so she shook it off. "Okay. Let's start looking."

She flew up trying to catch a thermal to make things easier. The jays complained, but a quick glare got them to back off. Jays were annoying, but smart enough to listen when she told them she just looked like a jay, she wasn't going to take their territory.. Not like that hummingbird had been.

Once she was the right height she circled. A few ravens looked her over, but they decided they had other things to do. Which was good. Ravens were also smart enough to listen, but sometimes they decided they didn't care and were going to play pranks on her just for fun. Corvids.

After a bit she looked over the device. It was hard following the needle as she circled, but the thermals here weren't good enough to get a proper hover and she wasn't beating her wings like a madwoman to stay upright for this nonsense. Eventually she managed to get a decent read on the device in her claws, matched it to a landmark, then swooped down.

"That way," she said to the waiting crowd.

"Good work," said Alissa. "Don't suppose there's any way to figure out how far Fili?"

"Not really," Fili replied. "If it was easy to figure out the Tower would have it handled already. Let's go a fair distance and remeasure. Better to pass it by and head back than keep taking measurements telling us what we already know."

Kotori stretched and rotated her neck. "I think I understand why you ground bound people do things so inefficiently now. It would totally suck to have to fly up and down a whole bunch of times I didn't need to."

"Don't harpys usually form in labyrinths with ceilings?" Alissa pointed out. "You can't really fly there. And you have to do all that 'inefficient' stuff."

"And we don't like it!" Kotori replied. "But I'm willing to do it here because I'm not gonna fight whoever's behind this all by myself."

Clara chuckled. "Well hopefully we don't need to do any fighting at all. Figure this has to be some kinda mistake. Because anyone who knows what they're doing has gotta know they'll get caught."

Alissa shook her head as they started towards where Kotori had indicated. "Never underestimate people's ability to be both really stupid and smart at the same time." Kotori had to agree with the assessment.

They continued through the city, ignoring the looks getting sent their way. A lot of people glared at her, and strangely at Alissa. Maybe they thought the cloak was to hide the fact she was a monster tamer? Which was weird because monster tamers all seemed to be super open about that. Humans were weird.

It was harder to ignore the slimes. They seemed to like Fili a lot, so whenever they wandered somewhere with a lot of uncleaned slimes the creatures would bounce over to her. Maybe it was like how she had power to communicate with birds? Slimes were way dumber than birds however, so they had to either kill the things or beat them up enough they ran away.

"Oh hey, Kotori, will your claws be alright with slime on them?" Clara asked after they'd squished a pack.

"It's fine. It's like a dust bath. Bet it clears out a lot of the little bits of stuff," Kotori replied. It was nice that the big woman was thinking over her though.

Clara smiled. "Good to hear. Well if you do need some help please ask. I know we aren't Raiel, but we do care, yeah."

"Mm." Kotori nodded. Her chest felt heavy again, but it was nice to hear people cared about her as her.

They did three more checks, each pointing in the same direction, which was kinda annoying. After that third one they reached the edge of the city, where the smaller farms were sitting. "Is it actually outside of the city?" Fili muttered. "Maybe a ritual gone wrong, or maybe I misjudged the polarity? No even I can tell there's a lot of magic in the air now...."

"So, should I measure again?" Kotori asked.

"Yes please," Alissa said. "Maybe you can figure something out."

Kotori circled up past the trees, then started doing a lazy rotation while checking the device. To her annoyance it didn't seem to settle down though. It'd start moving, then spin, then go back to moving again.

Finally she decided to move a little bit away. She flew back over the first row of buildings then locked again. This time it worked, pointing out over one of the farms towards the foothills.

But the second she flew closer it started spinning again. She hissed in annoyance, then paused. It was supposed to spin when they were close right? She flew in a little more and it did the whole 360 spin thing. That meant they were finally near their target!

She happily flew down and landed in the group. "Hey, it was doing to spinny thing! It must be right over there!" She pointed at the farm.

"Seems like a normal farm," Clara said. "Bit weird they're growing root vegetables now but-"

Fili groaned loudly. "Those are mandragora. It all makes sense now."

Alissa blinked a few times then put her hand on her face. "Are you telling me someone's been pumping raw magic into the atmosphere to help them farm rare plants?"

"Yes."

Kotori shook her wings as the humans all groaned. Really smart and really stupid all at the same time.