Fires Burn Things

[Aaron Winsett]

OoC: Takes place after the big fire, when Selk, Aaron, etc. (you fill in the blanks. There were like nine people there.) were attacked by wolf like monsters, and escaped through the fire and the flames. Specifically, at the camp after escaping.

IC:

Aaron rested, his plate, with a few morsels on it, heating near the fire. Aaron himself was sitting on one of the logs he'd pulled up to the impromptu fire ring that had been gathered, and was tending a few of the burns on his arm. in addition to his burns, he was sore where a branch had fallen on his back earlier, and there were numerous other small injuries that he'd accumulated over the evening.

His blue cloak, In near spotless condition when he'd started was now beginning to be tattered, with small tears forming, and black scorched cloth where a few burning limbs had hit. The mage had even had to blast off the lower corner of the cloak in order to keep it from burning up and spreading to his clothes.

The whole thing was weighing strongly on Aaron's mind. It was true, as Wein said, that it had been in self defense, but the forest fire that had endangered them had still been his responsibility. It had been a breach in his control.

Just for a bit of practice, he reached out and tried to seize control of the fire before him, but as he gazed into it's dancing, orange fingers, it eluded his grip. Natural flame was a slippery thing for him to grasp. After all, why train to control a natural fire when he could simply call up as much as he needed. Well, now he knew why. If he'd been more adept in manipulating natural fire, he could have stopped the whole incident once it had began.

[Selk Mar]

Selk had already rested some, if you could call it that. Having passed out on the edge of the water before. He used some of his vulnerary on the worst of the burn wounds and plucked a couple of splinters out of his leg. As he stood up to stretch and test the stability of his bruised and burned leg he noticed Aaron sitting alone on a log in front of the fire. Aaron appeared to be trying to do something with the flames. I realize we all just went through a pretty big ordeal and I'm worried about some of our allies who disappeared in the fire... but we need something to raise our spirits. Aaron looks the most down out of all of us. Maybe I can cheer him up. He walked with a partial limp over to where Aaron was and sat down next to him on the log.

"Kinda reminds me of the summer nights back home. Me, my mother, and my sisters would all sit around a fire in the pasture telling stories and eating kebabs," Selk said, not really able to think of anything that might help the mood directly at the moment. Maybe talking about his own home would remind Aaron of good times where he was from, too. It seemed to work that way in most other cases, right?

[Aaron Winsett]

The mage heard someone approaching and turned to see Selk Mar, easing himself onto the seat next to Aaron. He put away his failing attempts at altering the flame, and smiled at the mention of the spearman's home, though the weariness never wholly left his eyes.

"I've got a few of those kinds of tales. My father and I used to camp in the hills near where I met up with all of you. Heh,... I was going there to reminisce a little bit when, well you know.... How's that leg doing?" The Mage had seen the wolf-thing lock onto Selk's leg, but after that it was a blur. He remembered being tackled by, was it Wyatt, right before a large crash had sounded nearby. Wyatt was one of the ones who'd not made it out of the woods yet, possibly another trouble attributed to his fire. He'd decided hours ago, that this wouldn't stop him from improving, but it had still shaken him.

[Selk Mar]

The young spearman had a clearly interested look on his face, and he only grew more interested as Aaron continued with his story. It was a strange twist of fate that the place Aaron valued from his childhood would not only be where he met and fought bandits, but also where he met most of their group. Selk sighed and looked down at his leg, "It's mostly just sore. My foot has bruises on both sides from where that thing tried to sink its teeth in. Thanks to my plated boot, though, I'm basically unscathed. As for when that burning limb fell on it...well...I've got a bruise there, too, but the most annoying part was picking out a few splinters and treating the burns. I think I'll be alright in a day or two, though. How about you? You holding up okay from that whole ordeal?" Selk did his best to keep a smile on despite how things had turned out.

[Aaron Winsett]

Aaron felt like laughing and crying at the same time, when Selk mentioned the splinters. It was true that the branch would have fallen without his help, but Aaron had tried to help it along, burning it quicker to drop it on the creature attacking his friend.

The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. That phrase rang through his head, demanding that he remember it. Great harm had failed to strike this time, but not by much.

"I'll be fine. A few burns, some bruises, nothing time won't mend. Mostly, I'm just shaken. I felt powerless to stop that back there. I'm sure my grandfather could have done something, but I really was unable to stop it..." The mage shook his head, glancing towards the woods, and hoping to see some familiar faces returning. "I'm glad you managed to avoid serious injury though. I just wish that things had turned out different...."

...Wait a minute, did he just ignore the monsters?

[Selk Mar]

Selk began smiling wider than before when Aaron said that he'd be alright, but that smile quickly shifted to a frown when he heard his friend say that he felt powerless and unable to do anything about the flames. "Hey. Don't be talking like that. There's no doubt in my mind that you did the best you could. We all did. Just like I'm not a high ranking general in an army, you're not a powerful arch sage. You're not your grandfather either, Aaron. Don't worry about being the best there is. Just be the best that you can and work to improve yourself."

Selk then paused for a minute to think and take a breath. Something then popped into his head. An instance from when he and Aaron had first met. "Aaron, do you remember when we first met? On that mountainside? I was charging down into that group of brigands alone. Me, an untrained spear man still clumsily plodding around the battlefield because he isn't used to his armor. That was the first major mistake I made. And if you and Sir Malachi hadn't shown up...I'd probably be dead now. When he first gave me my armor and lance, my father told me that a single mistake on the battlefield, even a minor one, can be the end of you, and if you survive your own foolishness then you should consider it a blessing. With the kind of mistakes we've made and survived, I think that fate is watching out for us."

He paused again, giving a rather blank expression at this point as he glanced from his leg to the ground.

[Aaron Winsett]

Aaron listened to Selk, trying to encourage him. He was talking sense. The group did what it could. Only someone very vain would attribute their troubles completely to himself, and Aaron didn't want to do that.

"You're right Selk. Thanks, I guess I needed to hear that." The mage smiled and felt some of the tension ease into relief. Aaron turned his ear again as his friend continued.

"Fate, our friends, and a good deal of luck. That's what I figure.... Yeah, hahah, I remember that time. I was just coming over the hill, and I saw you there, lance in hand. My first thought was that you must be one of the heroes I've read about in tales." Aaron smiled broadly at this." A bandit was at your feet, and I thought he must have been begging for mercy. Of course, that one turned out to have fallen prey to the dangers of the drink, and that was why he'd fallen."

Aaron thoughts recalled all they'd done since then. The bandits, getting off the mountain, the trip towards Ostia, those creatures, and the escape through the fire... the creatures. "Selk, do you remember the next morning? The bodies of the bandits? And the howl on the mountain? could they be connected to what we ran into here?"

[Selk Mar]

Selk was glad to see his friend's morale take an upward turn. He was successful in his attempts to raise Aaron's spirits. His face began to glow red slightly as Aaron made the comment about him looking like a hero from the old stories he'd heard in his youth. "Haha...I don't get complements like that very often. But I'm no hero, my friend. As you can see I'm just a simple man from a farm who dared to dream."

When Aaron mentioned the bodies Selk nodded and began to think back. It did seem very strange that the bodies had been mangled like that. And not long after they'd encountered those wierd, almost unearthly wolf creatures. It did make sense that they would be related incidents. Normal wolves don't scavenge like that, and they aren't nearly that brutal. They only kill to eat. Whatever tore apart those bandits' bodies was larger than the average wolf and completely different in nature. Those creatures definitely fit the bill. "I think you might be right. Now that I think about it, it almost has to be related. But where did these things come from? And what are they?"

[Aaron Winsett]

"They're troubling." Aaron scowled at the memory. "They're like something out of a nightmare, a horror story, but I've never heard of anything like them. Maybe if I could get to a library, I could look something up, but...." His interest growing up had always been around myth, legend, even folk stories. Surely his Grandfather would have told him something about them. The man had served as his primary instructor after all. "No, I don't think it would turn anything up."

The mage picked up his plate from the ground, near the camp fire. It was uncomfortably warm, and when he looked, he saw that some of the food on it, one of the rolls, and a strip of dried meat, had been considerably overdone by proximity to the fire. Fires burn things... that should be obvious by now.

He set aside the blackened food, and offered some to his friend before taking some himself. "Did you say you were a farmer?" It was hard to imagine the armored man beside him as one to hoe the fields.

[Selk Mar]

"I agree. They aren't like anything I'd seen before. And I wouldn't lose any sleep if we never saw any more of them ever again," Selk said with an uneasy chuckle afterward. "Don't worry about them anymore." Selk nodded to his friend as if to reassert what he'd just said not only to Aaron, but to himself as well.

"Yeah," Selk nodded again, this time to affirm the answer he'd given to Aaron's question. "I grew up on a fairly small farm on the outer edge of Caelin. I did most of the outdoor work, being the only male in the house most of the time. My mother and two older sisters did everything else. They sold our excess crops, cooked, cleaned, and managed what money we had. My father wasn't around too often, usually only two or three days a month. He was a mercenary, so he only stopped in to spend some time and drop off what money he'd managed to make."

[Aaron Winsett]

The mage put away thoughts of those monsters. Selk was right. No good could come from thinking of things he simply didn't have enough information on. He hoped that they were gone for good, but wouldn't risk letting his guard all the way down just yet.

Aaron nibbled on a roll, while listening to Selk. "Managing the outdoors work on a farm. That's a lot of work.... I've had a bit of taste of that kind of job. Just enough to know I don't want to do that consistently." He gave his friend a small smile. He'd grown up on a type of farm, though it had been a very different situation he expected.