Fay twine, pulled from the fern plant and spun into cords, does well when it comes to binding. Most animals that you come across in the verses are affected by their magic-suppressing qualities. There are some forms of fauna, however, that do not need to take behavioral suggestions from ropes.
These bindings, while more than sufficient to hold down an elephant, are but mere threads when spun around the wrists of a minion of the High Overlord. The dragon kin do not understand this as they line the four of them up and put them back-to-back along the middle of the camp, shadowed by the Great Ziggurat.
Navigator Minion, Explorer Minion, and Scout Minion all share bemused glances upon the realization that their captors are not going to try to kill them right away, but in fact afford them the unthinkable opportunity of escaping and getting the jump on them.
Navigator Minion's antennae click back a little bit, producing a telepathic message to the others. "You don't imagine the jerks are really so stupid as to think this could hold us down, do you?"
"Well, of course they're too stupid to know that," Explorer Minion snaps back with his antennae. "These moronic savages wouldn't be able to tell etheriae like ourselves apart from some humdrum goblins or porklings."
Navigator Minion gives a slow, accepting sigh as a group of dragon kin youths leap out from nearby bushes to begin dancing around and taunting them in their own dialect.
Scout Minion's antennae pop up attentively.
"So, what's the plan?" Navigator Minion asks.
"I think I can talk to them," the scout says.
Explorer Minion scoffs. "Ah, of course. All the better that we have one of their kind on our side," he says with a spurious emphasis on that last part.
Scout Minion winces, but decides instead to let it go.
"My rifle," Explorer Minion commands.
Mime Minion twists over and wriggles a bit to open the pack and shows Explorer Minion.
It's completely empty.
As the dozens of dragon kin lift up their weapons, poking the minions with the pointy ends of various spears, blades, and axes, Explorer Minion can only sigh.
"You blithering idiot," he mumbles, as Mime Minion reaches out and pulls an invisible rifle from the bag, waving it around with a look of surprise, as if he were expecting Explorer Minion to immediately leap for it and begin firing upon their assailants.
"Well, fellas," Navigator Minion says with a scoff, "let's find out what they want, I guess." He nods down the path that a couple of the dragon kin are now poking him down in the direction of.
They're sat down in a sort of meeting grove as one of the tribal elders stands tall in the smoking embers of a fire, staring down at them with righteous indignation.
Scout clears her throat and opens her angular mouth. "Sick day out here – some badass weather for it," she greets in draconic. That's about all she can get out before the elder, much to the amusement of the other tribesmen, starts off on a long tirade. Only Scout knows the language, and her snide expression only grows in pretension as he continues on.
All the kin laugh, even the heraldic far in the back, draped down with the skins of big, deadly cats. He gives a single nod with a slant smirk to signal his approval.
"Well, so much for that," Scout Minion communicates back via antennae.
"What did they say?" Navigator Minion twitches back.
"You don't want to know," she replies.
"I mean, I'm sure it's a misunderstanding," Navigator Minion starts. "I really don't think that they'd expect us—"
"No," Scout interrupts. "You really don't want to know, and I sure as hell ain't gonna tell ya' next to Mime Minion."
Navigator Minion winces before glancing over to Mime Minion, who blinks back innocently with the vacant look of a child who has yet to fall off his bike for the first time.
"If that's the case, Madam," Explorer Minion begins, "then what in the world are we still doing here?"
Navigator Minion glances back to Scout before lifting his antennae again. "What we should be doing is contacting Towerne to get he—" he stops short as Scout raises her antennae directly to the sky.
Navigator Minion recognizes the gesture and gives her a moment of quiet.
"I'm thinking." She pauses for emphasis. "…we're not gonna to tell Poppi about this. We're gonna break outta this bullshit and kick these guys around until we get our point across. We're going to run 'em out, then we're gonna grab our stupid treasure and we're gonna go," she decides for the group.
"Well, alright then, Miss Scout," Explorer Minion says as he wriggles into his spot, as if preparing to watch a scene from a great movie. "Let's see it then."
With a deep breath, the squat form of Scout Minion pushes her face into her scarf, as if in concentration.
It's taken her a long time—a very long time—but she's finally begun to pin down the undercurrents of ether. The forms of divine power that construct her body are beginning to talk back to her more as she's taught herself to listen.
Her form shifts as her subconscious perception, guided by her conscious mind, begins manifesting based on her identity. It's as if she's changing the shape of her body ever so slightly to become much sharper than usual.
With a singular killer force of nerves, she's going to cut through these ropes and go right for the herald. What would take an unprepared minion seconds, would be but the blink of an eye for her. It's going to be hard for these kids to talk back to her and threaten her with a good time when she's the one bringing the party.
A younger Scout Minion would gain a vicious grin at a time like this, savoring the thought of wild carnage—the vision of the industrial-scale accident that's about to occur.
But she's going to do this quick, clean, and like a true professional. She's going to kill the one that they all care about, and they're going to surrender instantly – It's going to be that simple.
In fact, as she closes her eyes and savors the feeling of her coming victory, she can already hear them screaming and running off. It's a beautiful thought to her, so rich that it seems to make itself real from the anticipation alone.
Wait a second… that's "real" real.
Scout opens her eyes and looks across to see dragon kin all around her scrambling off into the brush, down the tree line, and over pots and pans, into huts and out of huts to get as far away from the four of them as possible.
"Good job, Mime Minion!" says Navigator Minion with an impressed smile.
Scout turns around immediately, feeling the ropes loosen as well. She sees, peering past a gob-smacked Explorer Minion, the sight of Mime Minion holding what seems to be a rifle made out of pure air trained in the direction of the heraldic dragon kin's nest, now abandoned.
"How did they fall for that?" Scout asks, her gaze slanted. "These dudes must be some real idiots if you can chase 'em off," she adds.
Mime Minion nods her way, putting the false elephant rifle back inside the bag, and gives her a cool thumbs up.
She cringes.
The last one visible of the lot, the heraldic dragon kin, folds into a grove of trees to leave, but it's taking its time. With its face misshapen and mutated by the power of draconic magic, he turns back one last time to speak a single phrase in its tongue before disappearing into the brush.
If Scout were to try and place the emotion on his face, she'd almost say he looked a bit smug.
"Laugh it up, moron," Scout says with a slant frown.
"Yes. Good riddance, ruffian," Explorer Minion snips as he wiggles out of the rope.
"So, what'd it say?" Navigator Minion asks as he brushes himself off.
Scout, still tangled in the ropes, stays still for a moment, giving a couple of defining blinks in thought.
"Well, what was it?" Navigator Minion presses.
She shakes her head.
"So, you've chosen to find out the hard way," she answers before looking over at Navigator Minion.
"Now just what the hell is that supposed that mean?" he asks.
"No clue," she answers back before giving a slow curl of her head to look over at the ziggurat looming next to them.
She doesn't hear any more strange birds, and as the structure blocks out the sun, a certain coldness overcomes her. It's not simply because the sunlight isn't on her—there's something supernatural about the place. It strikes her as particularly disquieting to realize how little they know about it.
Scout Minion opens her mouth to speak as Explorer Minion immediately begins scrambling through the tribe's possessions.
"So, why exactly was this place so important to 'em?" Scout asks. "Stupid place to build a home if you ask me."
Explorer Minion scoffs as he picks up a small doodad from a basket, looking at it under a monocle. "My dear, it should be quite obvious. The structure is the only thing that matters here. To us, it is an unexplored temple with a unique magical signature. It's like there's a complete gap in the universe."
"A gap?" Scout Minion asks, flinching her antennae.
Explorer Minion chuckles as if addressing a neophyte high schooler, eager and clueless in all things about the grand field of archaeology. "I mean, just look at it! See it with your own eyes, miss!"