Henrietta hit the water and began to swim.
The salty ocean stung her eyes, but it was nothing she wasn't accustomed to, and she broke the surface a few moments later. None of her team was readily in view, so instead she locked her eyes on her target. Though waves crashed over her and kept driving her underwater, she was able to glimpse a cliff of red stone in one direction, and she began to head towards it.
She took a deep breath the moment before a wave pushed her underwater, and she simply stayed submerged as she kicked out, cutting through the water with ease. A school of fish startled her as it swam up from the depths, silvery-blue scales flickering like lightning around her as they threw themselves at the water's surface only to bounce off of it, returning to the murky depths moments later.
As she approached the coast, the bottom still showed no sign of drawing any closer. She did see the very tips of some seaweed, whose glowing tops looked like mushrooms and faintly illuminated an enormous mass of sea life swarming around one another.
She came up for air regularly, each time having but a few moments to get air and confirm she was still going in the right direction before she was forced back beneath the waves. When she finally approached the coast, she timed her approach such that a swell of water pushed her against the rocks just hard enough that she could use its energy to vault onto the rocks, avoiding being crushed against the rocks through sheer Dexterity alone.
The stones above the waterline were mercifully free of barnacles and kelp, but were entirely covered by some kind of lichen that was incredibly slippery. Fortunately, they didn't go up too high and before her speed had fully bled off, Henrietta had managed to reach a rocky outcropping some ten, fifteen feet above the ocean spray.
Only then did she allow herself to pause.
The mana she could smell on the ocean breeze quickly informed her that there was nothing larger than a fishing village nearby, nothing that had cast a lengthy Shadow onto the history of this place. Hmm. No, there was something massive, but it smelled more like the Shadow of a mountain than the Shadow of a person.
That she was naked, her body felt thirty years younger, and she'd lost most of her skills and stats was a comparatively minor concern. She could still sense her Sketchbook, so she hadn't lost the magic from her last Expedition, and that would suffice.
She'd been in far worse positions, after all. There wasn't a single undead abomination actively hunting her, and the only chill she felt was from the water drying on her skin.
But my team... her face twisted into a bit of a grimace. Jacob would be fine. Alyssa would survive. Clark and Oliver... hopefully had either an easier landing or managed to be with the others. As a responsible leader though, she needed to assume the worst, and that meant finding them was a priority.
She cast her gaze around to assess what she had to work with. Beneath her, the ocean continued its relentless assault on the rocky cliff, to her left and right the cliff extended past her ability to see, and above the cliff went at least a hundred feet up before it was obscured by an enormous cloud of pseudodragon-like creatures soaring about.
They would work for her purposes.
Even as she schemed how best she might be able to get her hands on one of them, one solved that problem for her. One of the creatures swooped down and clung to the rock wall just a couple feet from her, looking at her with curiosity. It was a four-limbed creature with pink scales and looked like a combination of a pseudodragon, bat, and fish. With only four limbs, she supposed it wasn't a pseudodragon, more a pseudowyvern?
It didn't matter. Her hand swept out quickly and ensnared one of the creature's limbs before it could fly away. From there, she wrung its neck quickly before its claws could cut into her. It wasn't difficult, the thing was only the size of a cat, and she easily dispatched it.
With the pseudowyvern dead, she studied it and subsumed its shadow into her sketchbook, leaving the body desaturated while its details filled up an excessive amount of her canvas. The sketchbook itself acted as the core of the powers she'd gotten in her other Expedition, and while the way it was 'supposed' to work was rather inconvenient and slow, it had some truly wonderful combos with the otherwise-innocuous skills of scribe Classes.
She looked around for something to work as a pen or stylus, but obviously didn't see anything on the tiny piece of rock she was squatting on.
Hmmm… Henrietta assessed her fingers. She only sensed one skill remaining within her soul, and while [Refined Calligraphy] did exactly what she needed right now, it required a writing utensil to use as a focus. She assessed hands, un-inked and far less wrinkled than they had been mere hours prior, and decisively bit a notch into her pointer finger's fingernail.
While far from the easiest use of [Refined Calligraphy] she'd experienced, she was nonetheless able to get it working, and though she was currently limited to a very basic kind of black ink, it was all she needed.
A few strokes later, she had a crude drawing sketched out on her arm, the wet ink running and dripping to the ground. If it was meant to be part of a traditional spell, it would be awful, but it filled her purposes perfectly. It took a moment, but the ink shivered and shook, then peeled itself off her arm and pulling itself into the shape of the newly-copied pseudowyvern.
It flicked its wings and looked at Henrietta inquisitively, waiting for orders.
"Bring me more of your kin," she told it, and the inkling took off into the sky. After just a few minutes, another pseudodragon hit the ground next to her, which she subsumed and sketched out as well. That one too was sent out to get more of its kind, and with their magical constitution and single-minded devotion, her inklings were far faster and more resilient than their natural kin.
Accordingly, it took very little time before she'd gotten a full dozen subsumed into her power. She might have been able to keep going, but her Sketchbook was already getting quite cramped. She'd barely modified the creatures at all, and while even without cheating her limits via ⟨Epizeuxis⟩ duplicates were rather space-efficient, it would be tricky to fit a thirteenth.
That would need amending. This was smaller than her Sketchbook had ever been, and working within its limits would be annoying.
"Go and search the coast for any creatures like me," she told half of her inklings, motioning towards herself. "If you find any, return to me. Otherwise, return in... six hours." Her ability to command and see through the eyes of her inklings at range had been dependent on a skill she'd lost in the Jump, so she needed to be more strategic than usual.
They left, and Henrietta assessed the remaining half-dozen inklings present. It wasn't accurate to say she only had one chance at this, given how simple it would be to get more of their kind, but she would still rather manage it first try. The better she understood them, the more likely that was to happen.
Fortunately, her inklings were most compliant. Though not detailed in the slightest, more evocative of calligraphic approximations than actual creatures, the details she needed to know were present all the same.
Once she felt confident, she closed her eyes and began to meditate. Though editing something within her soul was difficult without the ⟨Edit Symbol⟩ subskill, she was relieved to find that it was possible, despite it not having been an original part of her power.
The space six pseudowyverns took up in her sketchbook was nontrivial, but still less than she'd need. So, she split all six of them into two parts: one was just their wings, and the other the rest of their body. She discarded two of the bodies to give her more space, then began combining the six sets of wings into one larger set. The bodies were detailed but small, so she was able to easily replace them with a sleeveless tunic, which was larger but very simple. Then she recombined the two, giving her a sketch of a long tunic with human-sized pseudowyvern wings and a good amount of space she could utilize for something else.
The drawing she'd need to make was going to be too large for her to draw on herself, so instead Henrietta turned to a semi-flat portion of the rock wall she was against, let some of her [Refined Calligraphy] ink drip down onto her fingertip, and painted herself the clothing she'd be using.
It peeled off the wall at her direction, and she quickly pulled it on. A couple tentative tugs on her magic confirmed that her wings were working, and then she was off. As she took to the sky, the pseudowyverns made some offended-sounding noises and tried to harry her away from their territory, and she saw no particular reason to contest them as she flew further down the cliff.
The stamina her wings had weren't terribly great. Even sized up, her template creature was small, and even though her inklings didn't always follow the laws of physics in the exact same way as natural creatures, they were still somewhat bound to physical reality. So, she frequently needed to find places to land to let them rest.
Getting out of the Wyvern Cliffs took six individual flights, spanning several miles. After that, she found herself on a narrow, rocky beach stuck between the ocean and a thick jungle. It hadn't been anywhere near six hours and her situation had changed enough that she felt it warranted to dismiss half of her still-active pseudowyvern inklings and recreate them near her, then send them out again to hunt.
Meanwhile, Henrietta kept hunting down the beach for signs of civilization. It was unlikely that they had landed too far away from a settlement of some kind, and that therefore made the most logical meeting point for them all once they found their way. Because the coast was more likely to have something, she kept going that way, flight by flight.
In several places, the rocky beach completely vanished, leaving her flitting between treetops overhanging bays and wetlands, as a multitude of different coastal conditions wove together.
The land was wild and untamed, a thick sub-tropical forest teeming with life. While a massive river cut through the forest at one point, she didn't allow herself to pay too much attention to the wildlife or geography, because that wasn't a priority for her yet. All she needed was to avoid any predators large enough to hunt her, and while there were a few creatures that could easily prey upon an adult human wandering through the woods and even soaring through its skies, they avoided her just as surely as she avoided them.
A couple of times, she was driven away from particularly notable landmarks – once by a flock of belligerent birds, the other by a tribe of tree-dwelling octopi who flung sticks and stones at her – but she had no reason to stay in a particular location any longer than it took for her wings to recover their strength, so it never escalated.
Eventually, her wings and her body grew altogether much too tired to continue searching. The ever-steady light belied her efforts to tell the time, but she trusted her instincts enough as to believe them that it was time to rest.
She ultimately settled for a cliffside cave, part of the towering wall of rock that dominated the shore-right, after driving out the winged sloth nesting within it. It wasn't especially large, but it was a sufficient size to hold her with no risk of her falling, and would be safe enough for a single night's sleep.
She awoke to one of her inklings nudging her arm, and Henrietta was instantly awake.
"Where?" she asked. Hopefully, the inkling had found someone being stationary, rather than just being on the move, and as she took flight behind it, she found herself quickly growing hopeful that was the case.
It wasn't an especially time-consuming flight, only a few minutes, but the pseudowyvern brought her back to somewhere she'd checked the previous day. Now, however, the distinctive scent of Smoke made her quite aware of the presence of humanity.
The choice baffled her. She assumed it was one of her team, but if it was then they should either be moving towards civilization if they did know where that was, or stay basically in their original position if they didn't, and make themselves easy to see for reuniting purposes.
Hiding underneath something to make them invisible from the air at a place away from the coast was a terrible idea, and she prepared herself to give whoever it was a solid scolding... but then again, she shouldn't judge their decisions until she knew why they'd done it. Perhaps they'd been injured. And had their preparatory training actually covered wilderness-survival? It had been somewhat abbreviated...
Henrietta was still frowning, but for a different reason now.
Nonetheless, as she drew closer she saw Alyssa and Oliver standing on a small clear patch of ground a few feet from an indistinct but large body, and dropped to the ground in front of them.
"Commander Inq?" Alyssa asked.
"Ride. Smith," she greeted them. "Would you care to explain why you've set up a camp here instead of heading towards civilization?"
The pair shared a glance, and Henrietta hid a sigh. She knew she wouldn't like the answer.
Henrietta did indeed not like the answer.
"No, I do believe you Smith. I'm confident that, at the very least, no civilization has come to this part of the world, and I really don't care if they're ten thousand miles away or ten million."
"Are you sure you couldn't believe me? I really want to be wrong."
She sighed. The nature of this new world was so massively different to what she'd expected, she really just wanted to go brew some tea and paint something to relax, she really truly didn't want to deal with her Artificer pleading with her as though she could change reality to her whims. But she wanted to be a leader, and that meant leading.
"I can double-check at some point, Smith," she placated him. Her remaining skill wasn't well-suited for divination on its own, and they had substantially higher priorities than figuring out if they'd need a plane, rocket, or teleporter to find other humans. "Right now, it matters most that we can get ourselves set up to survive, because we can't expect to find anyone to take us in."
Ideas raced through her head as she considered what they'd need. Food and water were largely accounted for, though better ways to boil water and cook food would be important. They did need improvements to their shelter as well, there were a number of unfortunate magical diseases that could come about as a result of improperly set-up accommodations...
She'd work with Oliver on that, she decided.
In addition, they'd need improved defenses and greater firepower, a start to a technological base, to find and regroup with Clark and Jacob, and a thousand and one other things she was certain she was missing.
Regrouping with their final two members would have to wait as her inklings kept searching for them. Perhaps she could create an inkling out of something with a better sense of smell? That left a better shelter as the next-highest priority, competing but intertwined with better defenses from the wilderness. A general idea filled out her mind as she studied the area, and she nodded with satisfaction.
"Ride," she asked the Ranger, "Does this carcass have use to you?"
"What, like tanning?" Alyssa shook her head, "No. We might be able to eat it though. Butchering might be tricky, though."
Henrietta forestalled that particular discussion with a raised hand. "No, it won't be edible if I subsume it. Or usable for much of anything."
She noticed out of the corner of her eye that Oliver perked up at her mention of subsuming. He hadn't seen her powers at work much, had he?
Henrietta made sure to give the Artificer a look as she knelt down by the tooth-tongue, one hand touching the still-warm body and the other the shadow it cast underneath the semi-directionless daylight. Then she pulled its essence into her Sketchbook, leeching the color and the potential of all its remains could have been.
A few minutes after that, she passed along simplified clothing to Alyssa and Oliver. Neither had wings of their own, but she was able to save space by mostly-duplicating her own tunic, barely fitting everything she needed in. The one piece of the toothtongue she kept separate, however....
A long, sinuous drawing on her arm dripped off, running down her hand and forming into a long prehensile whip or flail in her hand, the head still covered with the creature's eponymous fangs. With a small flick of her wrist, she directed her new weapon to coil around the creature's desaturated body and fling it as hard as it could.
The body arced into the sky, vanishing behind the trees well before it could land.
"Now then," she turned to her teammates, "We've got a lot to do, and we need to get started."