Welcome to Gaia! ::

A light nod. "But of course I wouldn't give him something right away. His system needs the shock and needs to start to adapt as soon as he's up there. I'll give it to him after a bit of time or he looks like he's going to keel over." After all, he had dealt with Zahara before Malik gave her something, he could handle Arthur.

Kieran leaned back in his chair some, crossing his arms but being careful to not disrupt Lark. "It's understandable. The Underdark, by whatever name it is called or any plane that it is on, any subterrainian enviroment is a very dangerous place. You have to protect yourself and your family againt that. I just think Arthur takes it as you personally picking on him as opposed to it being survival standards. Though that's not the truth, as we both know. You even put Piper through various levels of hell and training to be able to survive down here."

"And as you said as powerful as Sevilin is in his own right, I would call that elf more mage over warrior or assassin. Regardless of what he would do on first jump, magic or physical he would eventually burn out in one of the two ways. You have to have your backup. Every smart elf does. Chalk it up to Arthur being so young. Though as proven with Piper, even the very young can be taught what they need to survive. Even if they really don't want to."

Mmm, wine. It was always in supply around here. Though yes she preferred hers at room temperature or a little warmer than that. Don't ask her why, but it was just the way she preferred it. Made the nice warm fuzzy feeling even more so in her opinion. Oh hey look, there went her other two fingers on that hand.

"She also learned through you training her and fostering those immunities and tolerances for underdark things. And we both know how hard she fought on that sword issue, yet she's rather competent in it now. Nothing in life is ever gained easily and one has to be willing to suffer for what it best for themselves and everything around them." Though yes a chuckle at Malik's idea. "It's not too bad...though I dare say maybe too much for him. And mayhaps his style of mere defense comes from the loss of his eye?"

Isleandra gave her attention back to Malik again as she was sipping at her wine, then she set he cup down. "Again, I take it as a compliment. But I agree, if you're going to attack someone and you gain the upper hand, you have to follow through. Thus what I did with you. If I merely kicked your knees in and backed off, you would of just bested me and such."

Fin herd a strange sound, similar to someone eating pudding, turned and noticed that Leaf was gone. He looked around for a moment, and could not find or see her anywhere. She was standing in front of the left mirror a moment ago, but now she was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, a loud barking noise echoed from down the hall. A large rust coloured dog bounded towards Fin, so he readied himself for the attack. The creature leaped at Fin, and caused them to crash into the central mirror. Instead of a solid thud, as Fin expected, the duet fell through the mirror with that eerie pudding noise. Fin fell onto his back and rolled with the dog, throwing it over his body.

The Hellhound landed safely, turned a lurched at Fin again, but this time it used a frightening breath attack (similar to a flame thrower) against the elf. Without time to move, the elf suffered the brunt of the attack. The ring's magic was sufficient to absorb most of the energy, but Fin suffered some minor burns. Out came the dwarven sword, and into to hellhound's head. The creature fell still, and burned to ash before the elf. Fin checked his injuries, and decided that he would put off using his lay of hands until later.


"Yes, Father tought me a few things. Mostly, he didn't like the idea of a Drow elf not knowing a few things about dwarven culture." The drow chuckled. "The time for me to be going is rapidly approaching..." The drow lamented. The drow continued his minor affection for the dog.


Tarathiel giggled, "Hermit, me, never..." Tarathiel was practically a ghost to most people, he really did not like letting people into his inner circle. "Ok... Ok..." The child elf stood and dusted his short frame off. He was roughly the same hight of a human child of his age. His semi-long hair was styled to mimic both Elric and Cedric (as Celeste seemed to enjoy styling Tarathiel's hair just as much as Meilikki enjoyed doing it). "I'm gonna go tell Lavi-kun that I am going out. He would be cranky if he woke up and didn't know where I was." True enough. The dragon often slept for days, and was particularly lonely without the boy. He bowed to Onyx and Aella, and darted off (rather quickly for one his age).

Onyx watched the boy, and then looked over at Aella.

"want more company? or you want this to be time alone with the kid for a bit?"

While he got up, giving a stretch with his wings too, and one of those lazy yawning roar sounds.


"Perhaps. but if I try it, he's going to fight me on it and get defensive and storm off or something again. He might listen to piper, but she doesn't need the added stress right now. Suggestions?"

"I see he would get defensive either way...its unavoidable really. Perhaps you should just let him go about his business until Piper can handle it, ot use someone else. Zahara perhaps? Last I heard from Piper those two were...close." Yeah that was how he was going to put it. "Throw him a few fights for now that he can win. Boost his confidence. I'm not telling you to personally throw a fight, but have someone else that looks like would win against him do it."

A slight shrug. "Sure, it may be a little dishonest, but if that's the way to build confidence in him then do it that way. I think he feels put down by you and he won't ever get to even your level, much less above you." A pause. "Think about it in terms as if it were Piper. You and I both know how she was for a long while, afraid of surface elves, not feeling on thier level or anything...then she met you. It got better, because you allowed it to be okay for her. Arthur may just be the same way."

Leaf spun around, pulling an axe from her sheath...but saw nothing. She could hae sworn she had heard something though. Another quick look around before heading down the hallway she had tumbled into. The further down she walked, the more she noticed intricate and swirling carvings, obviously dipicting the element she was now in search of. She found a circular room with a vent in the middle, covered with a flat stone. Every once in a while, a blast of hot hair would come through th vent and lift the stone onto a hole of equal size in the ceiling. Standing on the stone, Leaf was lifted high and out of the temple. At the top was an open tower that looked after half a dozen or so similar towers, each one intricate in it's design.

Meilikki stood, smothing out her dress. "Indeed, I fear I have been gone far too long as well. No doubt I have a wonderfully large stack of papers that need attending to."

Deidrick gave Kimmurial's hand a lick, and stood to join his mistress.

"I'll wait for you here." She told the child, wathcing him go. "Don't get distracted though, I don't want to be waiting here for twenty minutes and then have to go find you."

She looked at Onyx and shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me."

Zahara raised one eyebrow and didn't move. Why was he telling her what freestyle was? She'd been freestyling since before he was even fighting. "Thank you for the vocabulary lesson. I suppose it was more of a review since I knew what that meant." But she left it alone and then returned to the fight. She shook her head. "Foolish, Galesen." In no less time than it took her to pull a baking sheet with cookies out of the oven she slammed up a barrier for him to run into with his blades blazing. Then she very calmly reached through the barrier and punched him in the face. "You are letting your emotions take over Galesen and that's the best and quickest way to get you killed."

Zykariel nodded, "Yup, you had it almost right." He watched as his friend zipped through the rest of it with very little help from him overall which was fine by him because he wasn't real great at doing it out longhand. Of course Piper got the innocent smile. "Play pirates and stuff. And I won't tell Mommy or Mr. Malik that you're working."

Lark took that journal and excitedly began flipping through it, reading quietly completely absorbed in his world.

Kieran glanced up at the druid and then passed a look to Malik as the drow seemingly got an idea. Kieran didn't think as much. If this one wasn't even on first name basis, slow or not in delivering it, and coming out of nowhere, well it didn't sit well with the elf too much. "What makes you think he's going to listen to the words of a stranger over someone he knows? If he is thinking like a human...they're almost as untrusting as the drow."

Sevilin watched with that bored look again, though he did chuckle. Didn't he know that when you stepped into an arena that was the go command? After all, that look on Arthur's face certinally said that he wasn't pleased. He crossed his arms over his chest, giving a smirk as Zahara easily rerouted an easily seen coming attack. Young elves...

Another look to them both and she gave another surrendering sigh. "Alright, you two can go play. Just don't get too rowdy and clean up after yourselves alright? Stay in the nursery. And Malikhai make sure to feed that draithix."

Well you didn't have to tell him twice, he was up and pulling Zykariel after him practically before his mother finished the sentence.