The night goes by quickly once everyone is asleep. In time the sun rises through the sole window in the room, prompting Ayla to get up and pack up her stuff. Reku, just as Ayla said, was completely out cold, quietly snoring, holding his naginata in his folded up arms. "Pfft, just like I said." Ayla said, looking over Reku. "Well, I need to get going. I've got an early deal in Tethys I need to handle, so I will see you three there hopefully. Good luck."
As she lays in the comfort of her bed, Rio opens one weary eye after Ayla finishes speaking. "Hmm?" She mumbles. For a moment, the one brain cell in her that's woken up wonders if it's time to get up, but the thought quickly disperses into nothing. Her eye starts to close.
Ayla notices Rio's barely awake, and decides it needs to be wake up time. Picking up her pack and slinging it over her shoulder, she moves to the door before cupping her hands around her mouth and yelling "CABIN INSPECTION!" Ayla's yell does nothing to wake Reku, as expected. The most she gets out of him is him rolling onto one of his shoulders in his chair.
Aurora jumped awake and instinctively forms an ice dagger in her hand. "Ayla, please if you have to yell then just shake me awake first," complained Aurora as she willed the dagger to melt in her hand and then she drank what remained.
Similar to Aurora's reaction, Rio sits up like a cheetah and looks at Ayla with a surprised, yet powerful look in her eyes. Her face quickly softens as she realizes nothing has gone wrong. "Oh." She relaxes her shoulders, then stretches her arms while letting out a long yawn. "Good morning."
"You know I could have, but its much more entertaining doing it this way." Ayla said, a devious smile on her face. "Anyway, I am heading out. I will leave you two to wake Reku. If shaking him doesn't work, he hates cold. I left the other supplies and winter clothes you'll need in that box" She added, pointing at a black box in the corner. "If all goes well, I will see you all in Tethys in a few days. Bye!" With that Ayla was off, walking out the door to begin her own trek.
"See you." Rio gets out of bed. The first thing she does is strap prosthetic hand back onto her wrist, again keeping her left arm out of view as she does so. She then gets ready for the day.
Bye," replied Aurora as she got to her feet. "So Reku doesn't like the cold... Well, I can do something with that." Aurora formed an ice wolf in the middle of the room and willed it to jump onto Reku in an attempt to lick his face.
It didn't even need to get that far. Just the ice wolf landing on Reku would have been enough, but adding a borderline-freezing tongue making contact with his face caused Reku to bolt up to his feet, nearly falling over onto the ice wolf. "SWEET LORD, ITS WORST CASE SCENARIO. THE NEXT ICE AGE HAS STARTED." He shouted, before registering the ice wolf at his feet. Taking a second to both shiver and recompose himself, which consisted of smacking himself across the face, he turned to face Aurora. "She told you about how I am terrible at dealing with cold, didn't she? Figures." Now wide awake, Reku looked around before locating the box that Ayla left them, approaching it and opening it up.
Rio giggles at Reku's reaction. "Heh, good morning." She says as she approaches Reku's side and looks into the box.
"Good morning, Mister Grumpy Pants," Aurora laughed. "And yes, she did tell me about you not liking the cold. What are you going to do about it?" The ice wolf padded over to Aurora and sat by her side, looking pleased with itself.
"Unfortunately nothing. My family was always called cold-blooded." Reku said, muttering something else under his breath before looking inside the box. The interior contained a few winter coats, the maps that Ayla and Reku had marked up earlier, a few books covering the legends of the Divine Blades, a collapsible tent and sleeping bags for the night, and a bit of food supplies for the journey. "Well, this wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I can make do with this stuff. Now we just need to figure out who is carrying what and if we need anything extra before setting off."
"I think that we all need to carry a bit of everything like we each carry our own coats and sleeping bags since those are pretty light anyway and a bit of food in case we get separated then we can all take turns carrying the tent. But if worse comes to worst, I can always create an ice-shifted that can carry what we can't but that would also wear me down before we even get to the objective," thought Aurora aloud.
"Let's try and avoid that if we can. Don't want you overexerting before we even get to the Peaks. For now lets just try and divide this up as evenly as possible. If someone is having trouble carrying their load, one of the others can take some of the load off." Reku starts shifting through the supplies in the box, pulling everything out and laying them in three separate piles. One pile had the books on the Divine Blade, one carried the collapsible tent, and one had all the maps. Everything else was evenly sorted between the three. "Everyone pick a pile and stick with it."
"It looks like this is enough to manage between the three of us." Rio says before sorting through her items, a task that takes a little longer than usual due to only having one good hand to work with. She puts her food supplies in her personal pouch, then stuffs her coat into her sleeping bag and resolves to just carry the bag around. Afterwards, she looks at the three piles for a bit. "I can carry the tent."
"Alright, if that is the case, then I'll take the books since you have the blade that we need to read the maps," concluded Aurora facing Reku. Aurora patted the head of the ice wolf before willing it to melt away, leaving a small puddle on the floor. "Whoops, I better clean that up before we leave, shouldn't I?" chuckled Aurora, mostly at herself.
"Probably. Alright, everyone grab your things, and let's set off." Reku said, grabbing his supplies. He manged to finagle most of his supplies into his satchel, keeping the maps on the outside pocket of it, while using some spare rope he had to tie the sleeping bag to his back.
The books were heavier than they looked to Aurora, but she managed to fit everything into her bags with a little room to spare for any other items that they could need. As she slung the bags around to her back, she nearly lost her balance. "I...I guess that I did that a little too fast," Aurora whispered to herself.
With everyone packed and ready, Reku lead the party out of the inn to the front of the building. Taking a second to recall the direction to the Peaks of Forte, he turned to face them. "Right, Peaks of Forte are north of us, but we have to cross Jin's Forest to get there. We will be heading that way." He said, pointing to the left, towards the northern gates of the city, where they could see a few guards standing at the ready, as a number of people passed through.
Rio stands tall with her filled sleeping bag slung across her shoulder. She looks over at the gates for a moment, then silently walks toward them with Reku and Aurora.