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“Rude,” I retort with a smirk.

“You shouldn’t be able to touch her,” Raiden says. “I can make physical contact with the dead, but only when I’m in my shifted reaper form.”

“So you couldn’t just shake her hand right now?” I ask and then add unnecessarily, “If she were here.”

Raiden shakes his head, “Nope. I don’t know of a supernatural that can interact with the dead like they’re alive on this plane.”

“But it kind of makes sense,” Ransom starts. “Neith isn’t just any kind of supernatural, is she?”

“He’s got a point,” Doc adds. “She’s a supernatural that is thought to be extinct, and we can’t do any research on it yet, so we don’t know what is normal for her.”

Raiden nods, but looks slightly frustrated, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not going to lie, it’s driving me nuts that I can’t research anything right now.”

“I know,” River says with understanding. “Hopefully it won’t be much longer though and we can get back to it.”

“Since we’re just waiting for Ribit to get back, how did your trial go?” Griff asks curiously after a couple of moments.

“Yeah, it was good actually. A lot more physical than the others, and only physical, which I’m incredibly glad for, especially after yesterday’s challenge,” I reply.

I can’t help but frown when I say yesterday, so much is happening in the days at the moment that it feels like more time should have passed. To be honest, it feels like it should have been days since this morning’s trial, not just a few hours.

“Were you in Luesidious? You said that one of the same creatures that you encountered there gave you the burn,” Doc asks.

I shake my head, “No, it wasn’t that realm. I don’t know where I was, but it felt different.”

“What was the trial?” Ransom asks curiously.

“There was a pack of them, and I had to kill them all,” I explain. “I had help, though.”

“From who?” Van asks, surprised.

“I think it was definitely more of a what than a who,” I reply with a smile.

“You think?” River asks, raising an eyebrow.

I pull a face, “Yeah, so this is going to sound absolutely crazy, but whatever helped me was invisible. So I have no idea what it was, it was big and deadly, it killed several of the backward knee things, and I have no idea what its motivation was for helping me.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Raiden says, his eyebrow raising along with his curiosity.

“Yep. I thanked it, and was going to see if I could find out more about it, but I got pulled back here before I could. I figure it was probably a creature of the realm that decided to help,” I explain, with a shrug.

That is not what I meant to say, I meant to tell them that the creature was the same one that bit me, and that the necklace that Flinotive and the imps gave me reacted weird before he showed up, but none of that comes out of my mouth and the harder I try the more the thoughts slip from my mind until I have no idea what I was thinking about.

Huh, I’m sure it wasn’t that important anyway.

Van nods, “Most likely. There are no rules against outsiders helping us, they just don’t tend to.”

“Yeah, they always seem to want to attack or eat us,” River says with a wide grin.

“Why are you smiling about that?” Griff asks with an eyebrow raised in amusement.

River’s smile widens. “Because it’s fun.”

Griff shakes his head, but his smile grows. “True, although it’s exhausting trying to hold back so that we don’t give away too much.”

“Agreed,” Ransom says.

“Hey, at least you guys have something to hold back,” I smirk.