Sentio was unsurprised when Cacopheny didn't come out of his room the next morning. However, since there weren't classes today-- they did get two days off a week, after all-- he was content to wait him out. He'd come out eventually, and maybe be coherent again. They needed to talk about what to do about those two nameless shadows he saw, haunting him. There had to be something. With him, Akija, and Chario all putting their ideas together, then there had to be something.

It was nearing lunchtime by the time Sentio started getting impatient. Cacopheny had been hiding long enough; it was time he started looking outside himself for ways to cope. Goddess, it was time he started trying to cope, period! Running away, even if it was just to another room, was hardly coping. Some of the shadows could be reasoned with; most of them could, in fact. Maybe these were the same, and Cacopheny just never bothered to find out. He'd let them all run roughshod all over him for most of his life. It was time he stood up for himself.

So he put aside his book and rolled himself out of the basket-chair. "I'm getting him out of there," he announced to the rest of the room; Akija and Chario had been waiting, with him.

Chario looked up from the hand-held, cube-like puzzle in his hands-- he called it a Rubix Cube, a memento from Star City the spring before-- and nodded a response. They both turned to Akija, who looked momentarily torn before settling back again and nodding, herself. Sentio looked at her for a moment longer, rather wishing she'd gotten up to come with him, while Char gave his cube-thing a vicious twist, probably thinking the same. Sentio thought at least part of the problem would be solved if Akija just offered to help, but it looked like she was still too sunk in whatever unnatural melancholy she had fallen into.

Sentio took a deep breath. "Right," he said, to no one or both of them, or just himself, and turned, marching back to his bond's door and trying the handle. Locked, but that wasn't about to stop him. He glared at the knob a moment, plucking at a bit of magic he'd learned about, unsurprisingly, from a book, and it obligingly clicked open for him. Cacopheny had no idea anyone could lock or unlock a door with magic, luckily; he expected the half-demon could easily have made that trick impossible, if he'd considered it.

Steeling himself for what could possibly be a bad scene, Sentio opened the door and stepped inside. The room was, as he'd half-expected, pitch black, and smelled strongly of shadow-magic. The hairs on the back of his neck rose instinctively, and he scowled at himself. He ought to be used to that by now, curse it.... "Cacopheny?" he said into the murk.

There was no answer. Not even a scramble on the other side of the room, or the faint rustle of a surprised twitch. Surely Cacopheny wasn't asleep; he was such a light sleeper, most of the time, he'd have woken up to just the sound of Sentio talking in the next room. Maybe he'd just expected him to come in, heard him say he was going to. That was probably it.

"Cacopheny, come on." He waded-- it really did feel like wading, as if the air was thicker than it should have been-- into the blackness. The faint glow that sprang, unintended but welcome, to his fingertips did little to pierce the darkness. "I know you're in here."

Still nothing. He didn't even have a sense of his bond in the room, which made no sense. Even when he was being blocked as securely as this, he still could tell when they were close.

"Cacopheny...?" he tried again, nervously, and he flicked on the lights. Not even that helped much.

"Char, Akija? Can I get one of you in here?" Sentio wasn't a good enough mage to dispel Cacopheny's magic, Light dragon though he was. He needed their help.

There was a long pause, during which Sentio started feeling a little nervous at how the darkness was literally pressing on him, enveloping him like mist rather than simple absence of light. It was all too easy to imagine it was alive and surrounding him, protecting whatever it hid in the room, trying to keep him out... immobilize him.... By the time the darkness finally began to lift-- and he could start to see a few dim lines appearing and growing steadily brighter up above his head, the room's lighting spell-- he was trembling with nerves.

It seemed anticlimactic to see the empty room, when the magic darkness was gone. Sentio frowned, his own magic dimming as he forgot about it, and said again, "Cacopheny?" He turned slowly, looking around. There really wasn't anywhere in the room where someone could hide, Cacopheny didn't have enough furniture. The bathroom door was ajar, and a peek inside and around proved that it, too, was empty.

So he drifted out, confused. "He's not there," he told Char and Akija, puzzled and starting to get a little worried.

"Not there?" Char repeated with a frown.

"Not there," Sentio said again.

"He's... gone?"

That actually came from Akija. Apparently Cacopheny's disappearance was enough to shake her out of her unnatural despondency.

"Where could he have gone?" Chario asked.

"I-- don't know!" Sentio answered worriedly, looking around the living room. Char got up, tossing the cube-puzzle down, but he just looked about as restless and helpless as Sentio felt. "He's not here somewhere, I don't think-- I can usually tell, even when he's blocking me. But usually he tells me if he's going somewhere.... He didn't tell either of you...." More a statement than a question, since it's obvious he didn't, or they'd not have been waiting outside his room for him with him.

"All right," Char said, scratching at his hair with a frown. "So where do we start looking? He can't have gotten far, even if he's shadow-hopping, right?"

"Well, that kind of depends on when he left," Sentio answered nervously.

"You can't sense him at all?" Akija asked, actually looking at him now, feet swung down from where she'd been curled on the couch. "Not even like when... when the she-demon got him, and we followed you?"

"Well," Sentio said uncomfortably, "that was more because he'd forgotten to block me.... But usually I can at least tell which way he's gone, yeah." The fact that he couldn't even tell that, though, worried him. They hadn't exactly tested the bounds of their bond, so he didn't know how far that meant he had to be. "Maybe he'll just come home on his own," he added hopefully. "I mean, if it were like last time, we'd all know about it."

"Guess so," Char murmured, voice subdued as he-- like Sentio-- was probably reminded of that last horrible disappearance. "Guess he might've just needed some air," he continued more strongly, but faltered again at a glance at Akija. She hadn't moved, looking down at her hands. Sentio frowned, following her gaze-- and Chario's-- to the handful of shadow-stuff cradled in her hands. He blinked, then realized that she'd collected the magic from Cacopheny's room, yes, but rather than letting it go like she usually did, she was holding onto it.

Char gave himself a shake and finished, "I suppose we should give him a while to come back before we all raise a ruckus and go out looking for him...."

Sentio didn't look up when Char did, and so saw when the bit of shadow coiled meekly in Akija's hands wrapped a tendril out and around one of her fingers. That didn't seem particularly out of the ordinary, at least until he glanced up and saw her eyes go wide and ears perk with more alertness than he'd seen from her in days.

Then he jumped as, beside him, Chario jumped, and Akija went rigid.

"What, what is it?" he yelped in surprise.

"Sentio!" Char hissed, "It talked?"

"What talked?" Sentio asked, confused, looking between the two of them. The shadow was wrapping itself snugly around Akija's hand, now, like a second glove of black.

"That!" Char pointed at Akija's new magical accessory, which she was holding up in front of her, flexing her fingers almost absently inside of it. While she'd sagged back into the couch with the lessening of surprise, her expression had gone strained.

"That's... weird," Sentio frowned, coming over to investigate. "Cacopheny must've... done something to it. Before he left. What'd it say?"

There was a pause before Char answered, and Sentio knelt down in front of Akija on the couch to get a better look at her shadow-glove. She started to pull her hand away, protectively, until she registered it was him and let him look. He smiled a bit at her, reassuringly, before focusing on the magic encasing her hand, now almost to the elbow; it seemed to have stopped, at least. "'I'm sorry'," Char said at last. "That's all."

"That's all?" Sentio repeated in disbelief, looking up at him briefly. "What would he meant by th--" He broke off, guessing what it could very well mean. "Oh, no. He wouldn't have."

It was Char's turn to frown and echo him. "Wouldn't've what?"

Sentio sat back, shocked. "Just... left. For good. He wouldn't have." Wouldn't he?

"What?" Char looked stunned by the very idea. "Wh-- no! Goddess, no! H-he couldn't. Where would he go? What would he do? Asuka," he hissed, turning the goddess' name into a curse. "Maybe we do need to go out looking... just-- just in case."

Sentio felt sick. Cacopheny had told him once that he'd considered leaving, letting Sentio live his life without the burden of a crazy half-demon weighing him down. Before he could protest vehemently that he didn't want Cacopheny to leave-- crazy or not, he was used to him, and he liked having him around-- Cacopheny had assured him it was a long time ago and he didn't have those thoughts now. But what if they'd come back? What if somehow those thoughts had come back?

If Sentio felt sick, Akija-- looked sick. He swallowed, trying to get his own fear under control. "I don't wanna jump to conclusions. He probably didn't do that. He told me he didn't think like that anymore. Maybe he's visiting someone, or-- well, remember his shadows were being really bad, maybe he's just-- trying to get away from them, and we'll find him wandering around somewhere."

"We won't know for sure unless we look," Chario said with the aire of a decision made. "Akija should stay here in case he slips in behind us, and I'll go see if I can talk Kenjista into helping us look." He was already starting for the bonder daemon's bedroom, where she was probably stolidly ignoring them all, like she usually did when they were preoccupied with one of their other bonds and not with her.

Sentio put a hand on Akija's knee tentatively. She looked so... lost, focused on that bit of shadow that still coated her arm. "We'll find him," he promised her, trying to sound reassuring.

Akija hardly looked at him, and he sat back unhappily. What was wrong with her? Akija was usually the type of person to hop up and be the first one out the door when there was trouble, particularly when Cacopheny was involved. Even with how strangely she'd been acting the past few days, he could hardly reconcile this despondent inaction with the daemon he knew. He had no idea what to do with her, say to her, not that didn't involve shaking her violently in an attempt to snap her out of it.

He might even have done that, if he hadn't been anxiously listening in on Chario's conversation with Kenjista-- or, at least, Chario's half. Kenjista wasn't including him in her replies, or even letting them echo across their bond. He couldn't even see her, with the angle of the door and where he was sitting.

"We need your--" Chario began, then stopped abruptly, as if Kenjista had interrupted. "Kenjista, please," he tried again a minute later, all but pleading. "You're the best psionic among us and you know it. We'll be able to look for him so much faster if you help."

What came next was a surprise, and Sentio jumped guilty for his evesdropping as Chario snapped angrily, "Just what did you get out of this, anyway? So you don't like Akija or Cacoph', fine, whatever, I don't know why you bonded me and Sentio then, anyway, but we chose them." Even Sentio could hear the unspoken but heavily implied fact that they hadn't chosen her. "If you think you help your case by not helping just because Akija and Cacoph' are involved, you really need to think again."

There was another pause, and Sentio wished he had his longer ears so that he could hear better. It was almost as maddening as not hearing the conversation at all, hearing only half of it.

"Can't you see how serious this is?" Chario demanded. "If we don't find Cacoph', there's no telling what might happen-- and don't you think you'd rather be on our side, if you help prevent something bad from happening, than sit back and do nothing?" Sentio had been trying not to think about that, himself: whether that "something bad" happened to Cacopheny or because or him. Another pause, then Chario growled, "I'll remember that you didn't try to stop it."

Sentio thought he caught the sound of Kenjista's mattress shifting, and Chario said pointedly, "As long as you tried."

That time he definitely heard the large door set in just for Kenjista's use open; it had a distinctive creak to it. Then, a moment later, the click when it shut. It took another long minute before Chario came back in, one in which Sentio imagined Kenjista's refusal, her agreement, her arrogant ignoring of there being any problem with not helping, her condescending promise to try....

"Did she?" he asked anxiously when Chario finally reappeared.

Chario nodded. "And she expects to be worshipped when she finds him. We'd better get outside before she changes her mind."

Motivated more by Chario's uncharacteristically annoyed tone than by the threat of Kenjista changing her mind, and more than that by worry for Cacopheny, he gave Akija one last concerned look and pat on the knee, then hurried outside.

Returning to the house was discouraging. Sentio hadn't wanted to give up yet: he could create them all some light and they could keep looking; he wasn't tired yet, really, or hungry-- just ignore those rumbling sounds coming from his empty stomach. Maybe if they looked a little harder, or if he focused a little harder on his bond, or they ranged a little farther out from the city, they'd find him.

Though Kenjista complained at him long before sundown, it was Chario who finally got him to come back home once it got too dark to see without help. At least for the night, he'd said. Akija was still at home, he'd said, and she'd worry. Since Akija and her... weirdness... was still gnawing at the back of his thoughts, Sentio finally gave in and followed him home.

The house was, a little surprisingly, lit up when they got back to it. The lights were on in the kitchen and upstairs, and a tray had been set out on the kitchen table. Kenjista left them at the entry with a grumbled "good night", heading around the house to her own door, and after they shifted back to human form Chario led the way inside. At least Akija hadn't been sitting on the couch the whole time, though she didn't seem to be downstairs waiting for them.

Though he felt a little guilty for it-- thinking about food, when his bond was out lost somewhere!-- the sandwiches under the tray's bespelled cover were what caught Sentio's attention first, and he came right over to the table, as Chario noisily set about getting out cups. "At least she's been up and around some," the Fire commented, obviously referring to Akija. He was a little louder than normal, too-- maybe letting Akija know they were home?

"At least," Sentio agreed, though that was only small comfort, after their lack of success. He took a few of the sandwiches off the tray for himself, Char, and maybe Akija if she deigned to come out, setting them on plates probably left out just for that purpose. The rest he left on the tray, floating it over to Kenjista's end of the table, sticking out into her room. The lights hadn't come on in the dragon-sized side of the house, but one bronze paw snaked through the window to accept the offering, nonetheless.

"Maybe we should ask her clan to help us look tomorrow," Char was saying. He'd gotten out the juice and poured them both a cup. "Get more eyes out there."

"Maybe...." Sentio stared morosely into his juice. "I'm afraid that he's just gone farther than we've looked.... But I suppose I could've missed him." He'd spent most of the search in the air which, while able to cover more ground and not interfering with looking using his connection to the half-demon, made looking closely at things, or under or through things, difficult if his bond had somehow managed to make their connection even thinner and harder to trace.

"Well, it can't hurt to ask," Char declared around a second bite of sandwich. "We're honorary Watchers, they'll be happy to help if we ask. Whatever sense they detect magic through, lots of them know what Cacoph' feels like. Maybe they can track him, or something."

Sentio perked up a bit at that thought. He hadn't even thought of that; his own sense of Cacopheny's magic was weak and unreliable, and even if he'd gone shadow-hopping, maybe that left a magical trail that daemons could follow. "Maybe Akija will help. She knows it better than anybody, doesn't she?"

Char's eyes lit up. "Yeah, really!" he agreed brightly. "It's worth a shot."

"Is she up still?" Sentio asked, looking up at the ceiling hopefully.

"Uh-huh." Chario pressed his lips together, looking as frustrated and confused as always, lately, when Akija came up. "And still hard for me to read-- she doesn't think in words lately. Just... emotions."

The very idea of thinking without words was hard to wrap his own mind around. "That can't be a good thing," he muttered. "Is she going to come down?"

"Hoping so," he replied, just as quietly. When he started eating again, he kept his eyes on the stairs. Sentio made it halfway through his sandwich before Char, eating more slowly, set his down and focused all of his attention on the stairs. Sentio gulped down what was in his mouth in time for Akija to come down into the kitchen. She was in her pajamas, though there were rather more clothes to them than she usually wore in the summertime: pants, not anything shorter, and a shirt.

She looked out at the two dragons tiredly. "Just wanted to say goodnight," she murmured.

"Going to bed already?" Sentio asked.

"Mm-hmm. Tired," she agreed. Her eyes found the plates in front of the dragons. "Sorry I didn't feel much like cooking."

"It's fine," Chario answered her, his expression tense with concern.

"Yeah, thanks," Sentio put in. Sandwiches were good enough for him.

"You ate already?" Char asked.

"A little. Wasn't very hungry."

Unsurprisingly, Char looked troubled-- Sentio couldn't blame him. Tired already, when she hadn't done anything all day? Not hungry? "We're going to ask your clan if they'll help us look, tomorrow. We'd like you to come along, too."

"You know his magic best," Sentio added. "Thought maybe you could track him like that."

"Track?" she repeated blankly, and it took a moment for her weary confusion to morph into uncertainty. Her ears twitched, and she moved her gaze to Char, who looked, oddly, like he'd had some kind of revelation. "Okay," she said at last, "I'll try." With that, she turned and started back up the stairs. "See you in the morning."

"Good night, Akija," Sentio said after her, looking between her retreating tail and feet-- for as long as he could see those-- and Char. "What's that look for?" he asked, a little warily.

"She's still holding onto his magic-- on the inside. She... sort of thought about it... and then I finally noticed." He gave Sentio a helpless look. "I don't know what it means."

"I don't, either," Sentio admitted. "Maybe if she keeps being so strange, we should ask somebody."

Char sighed and picked up his sandwich again. "Unless she fixes herself overnight," he muttered, thinking aloud, "somebody will have to notice tomorrow. We'll go by her parents' house first, and... work from there, I guess. Deiv might be out, but Chaith would notice, or even Aeta...."

"Goddess, anyone would." Sentio glanced up at the ceiling again. "Well, here's hoping tomorrow pans out with something."